


Daybreak

by Anonymous



Category: Psych
Genre: BAMF!Partners, Carlton Lassiter and Juliet O'Hara, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Partner feelings, Vampire AU, Vampire!Juliet, Whump, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 16:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13838532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Protect and serve - Juliet O'Hara believes in those words, and since she became a detective here in sunny Santa Barbara, she has tried her hardest to honor that oath. But after a vicious attack that left her standing, but not quite the same, Juliet is forced to come to terms with her new nature, and to figure out how to keep the people she cares about safe - her stubborn, grumpy partner included.She'll serve them. She'll protect them. Even if it means pushing them away.Too bad Carlton Lassiter is really, really not okay with it.





	1. Chapter 1

In the moment the monster grabs at her neck and is about to bite her – throat stretched back, exposed to the harsh light of her apartment duplex laundry, dryer digging in the small of her back, heart thundering and crashing against her ribs – she thinks about him. About his voice. 

In a way, Juliet supposes, it figures. Carlton's voice has taken residence in her skull for years now – popping up when she feels angry, or outraged, or like cursing, or – curiously – like laughing. She can almost picture him saying the words, thick eyebrows drawn together, thin lips pulled in a line, those stunning blue eyes of his stabbing through her chest. He has no idea of the power of his eyes. He had no idea he should use them with care, that it's like carrying a loaded gun, a knife always just barely sheathed. They could kill, break a person, both in the best and worst way, and he has no idea. 

_O'Hara, react. Fight. Dammit, Juliet – fight._

_I've tried, Carlton,_ she says to the Lassiter in her head – patiently and firmly. The world is growing hazy, smudged around the edges – as if it were made of crayons and a child just rubbed his thumb across it. She's not sure if it's from tears or from blood loss. _Believe me, I tried. But I'm scared._

_I'm so scared, Carlton._

There are teeth skimming along her neck, now – pressing over her pulse. She's already bleeding. A gash on her forehead, when she slammed against the detergents’ shelf the first time the man – the man-shaped thing – grabbed her and shoved her, and from her chest, just under the seventh rib. Blood has been pouring out in time with her blood, with a deep, gurgling noise, but now it's slowing down. It's not even hurting anymore. She knows that's a bad sign. She knows she should keep her hands pressed on it – Carlton's voice screaming in her head, rattling off statistics and first-aid tips, so close it almost feels like a phantom pressure against her wound, his own fingers pressing down – but she doesn’t feel her hands anymore. 

She's floating. The man is breathing again her neck – a ripping sound, cold on her shoulder, and she realizes he's pulling back the collar of her shirt, exposing skin. His fingers are so cold they leave her skin scorched – ice-burnt. He growls, and the sound rolls across her throat, shooting right to her brain. 

She feels her hand fumble for her gun, strapped on her waist holster, trashing like a maddened butterfly - but it's useless. The man catches at her wrist – holds it tight. She hears bones grind together – crack. She doesn't even remember to scream. 

For a moment, the time of a long, thundering heartbeat, she heard herself cry – _sob_. She's not ashamed to cry. She has things to cry for. She thinks about Santa Barbara's early mornings, climbing up the stairs of the precinct with the smell of salt and iodine filling her lungs. She thinks of spiky hair and cocky smiles, of almost-kisses shared over her desk, secret like a teenage crush, of a messy office littered in fast-food wrappings and Slurpee empty cups and still smelling like _his_ aftershave. She thinks about her partner, too – waiting for her to jump in the Ford, shades on his pale face, freckles coming out every time he stays out in the sun more than five consecutive minutes. His laugh - the rush of pride the first time she got it out of him. The feeling of him hugging her in the whipping wind of the clocktower. 

The fact that none of them, that _h_ e will not see her grow, not see her grow into the cop he confessed her he was sure she could be, somehow hurts worse than anything else. 

_No,_ Juliet thinks. Blood drenching the plastic table, a buzzing cold spreading from her neck, in her veins - rushing them with ice, all the way to the heart. _No, I can't die. I can't die like this._

There’s a tug, somewhere on her throat. Agony. Juliet feels her skin slice open, the fangs digging in – gnawing on skin and flesh and nerves. She hears her blood rushing out of her – gurgling down his throat. The pain is everywhere. It steals the breath. It stops the heart. Her nerves burn up, short-circuit. 

The man clutches harder – pushes her up, against his broad chest, the mockery of a lovers’ embrace. The world shatters in a shower of glass shards – colors splitting. Dark shadows, red blood, white skin – the man's, and hers, growing blue at the edges, growing the gray of morgue corpse. Dark, red, white. 

_I can't die like this. I'll stay, guys. I'll still be here. I’ll still be here._

There is no real thought. There is just Shawn's face flashing behind her eyelids, outlined in warm golden light – crying his eyes out over her grave. There's just Santa Barbara's salty air, her desk empty of everything she’s ever been, a different plaque on it. There's Carlton's jaw clenching so hard it's bound to give him one of his migraine, the line of his shoulders shaking under his jacket - blaming the world, the fates, himself, _always himself_ – and then, suddenly, there is action. There is rage. 

Slowly, oh so slowly, as if from eons and universes of distance, Juliet’s hand reaches up, shaking like a leaf - pushing it against the monster's chest. He barely feels it. He barely groans, and pulls her closer, gnawing on her neck, sucking her dry. Then Juliet calls on every scrape of strength of her body, every ounce of anger making her heart beat a little stronger, her tears run a little faster, till she's buzzing with it, ringing with it like a diapason - the last shot of a failing gun. 

_Fight, O'Hara. Fight._

_Yes._

The monster never sees it coming. She has no idea what she's doing. When she'll tell the story, years later, she'll say there were only colors – dark and red and white, rushing together, swirling in a blur, and her fingers closing around the vampire's neck, and her lips sighing against it, and her teeth biting down in his skin – feeling it shatter under them like a crust of ice – pushing down till she felt raw flesh against her tongue, and blood, thicker and muskier than it should be. 

The monster roars – whines in pain. As Juliet fades away, blood choking her, her body catching fire, she thinks she hears a note of real alarm in the vampire's voice. Of panic. Of _fear_. 

As she starts screaming and bursts up into flames, Juliet realizes the thing he’s afraid of must be her. 

*** 

Pretending is getting hard – with Carlton too. _Especially_ with Carlton. 

For the whole time since this madness started, she has been trying to be prepared. _Devil’s in the details_ , she thought rinsing her blood-smeared blouse in the sink, and she had to bite down on her lip to keep a hysterical laugh from bubbling out of her. 

The morning after the attack she called in sick, and spent the day crying and going looting the make-up shop at the mall, stripping them of every concealer, foundation and blush the poor salesgirl showed her. Juliet tried her hardest not to think how she should look from the outside – Ray-ban on despite the cloudiest morning Santa Barbara had seen in months, matted hair pulled up in a messy bun, gray skin peering from under the oversized SBPD sweater she’s hastily pulled up stumbling past her door. Probably the girl took her for a drunk, or a junkie. She _hopes_ she took her for a junkie. 

(She saw the calls piling up in her cell – felt it buzz against her jeans pocket every time she got a message. She could almost feel the increasing annoyance pouring out of them in waves, travelling faster than telephonic waves through the air, and the moment the annoyance mixed with grumbling worry, and the moment grumbling worry gave way to plain worry. She ignored it. Like she ignored the fact she perfectly knows who was the caller. She ignored it, and curled in a tight ball on her couch – shutters drawn because sunlight made her eyes tear up and prickle – and clawed at her own palms to prevent herself from calling back.) 

The next day, she had things pretty almost figured out. On the surface, at least – a hair-thin, fragile surface, already showing cracks. Juliet was desperate enough to be content with surface, though – especially when it was the only thing keeping her from tumbling into insanity. 

She put on layers of foundation, concealer under her eyes. She added blush on her cheeks, and pink lip-gloss – because a consequence of not having a beating heart anymore is, apparently, not being able to blush or look flushed anymore. Simply put, blood doesn’t flow anymore. You grow pale, white – skin polished and spotless, the shell of an egg. Lips and nose and eyes drawn in perfect, minimalist lines, colorless, like a charcoal sketch – stripped to their bare shapes. Her hair too looked lighter, sucked out of color, and she passed her hands through it with shaking fingers, wondering if she should just dye them – shaking at the sheer madness of her plan. 

_You can’t go to work and walk in like nothing happened. You could hurt someone. Kill someone. You should –_

There her mind always stopped, short-circuiting in a splutter of electricity. Yes, what should she do? In movies, people like her rarely find nice, polite solutions. They get beheaded, or blown up, or pinned to the ground with wooden stake like collector’s butterflies. Or reign in dark realms of damnation and wickedness, gorging on virgins’ blood. 

And she didn’t do it for that. She didn’t sacrifice – sacrifice whatever she sacrificed – for _that._

So Juliet gulped down the fear, and the madness, and kept preparing. Pulling her hair in a delicate-made bun, so it’d attract less attention. Blue contact lens – because while still being blue, her eyes burn with red shades every time she looks into a mirror or they catch light. She finished applying her mascara, fringing her eyes with black, thick lace the way she had done since she was twenty, and slipped in her pink blouse and matched pumps. She palmed her notebook, too – a copy of Carlton’s Black Book he got her ages ago despite all the times she gently but firmly remined him she was not going to start a Crap List. In it, written in her small, tidy handwriting, she had jotted down all the things she had learnt so far. 

_Details,_ Carlton’s voice prattled on in her head. _Facts. That’s what a detective works on. That’s where the truth hides – and where we go to flush it out._

(It was sound advice. Most of Carlton’s are, if you have the patience to weave them out of the tangle of elaborated cussing and teeth-clenched grumbling they’re usually snagged on.) 

So far, Juliet had realized the stories about sunlight turning you into ashes are bull. As the bit about not being able to see yourself in the mirror. You can eat, physically speaking – but everything tastes like sand or chalk, drying out your mouth. 

The fangs are real, but way more discreet than Hollywood movies – and Shawn’s pitiful performance as SBPD vampire from last Halloween, which essentially involved lots of strawberry syrup and saliva-soaked plastic fangs. She spent half an hour passing her tongue against them, tracing their cold, curved outline. It already grew in kind of a tic – but if she took care, she could hide them under her lips even smiling. 

There was a voice in the list she had hoped – deeply, _desperately_ – to be crap. It isn’t. 

You do need blood. And wanting it has nothing to do with hunger. 

Wanting it feels like having life sucked out of your bones – like feeling your body rot and die with your trapped in it. Literally. 

As she prepared for work, though, she was still persuaded she could handle it. She pushed the notebook in her purse, and fished the car keys and the badge out of the fish-shaped bowl in her hallway, and strapped her Glock to her holster with shaking hands. The day before she has bought raw liver from the butcher’s counter – and she was trying her hardest not to think about the way she ate it. But she hoped it was enough. She hoped it was a solution, and that her makeup would hold, and that being in the PD, with her people, would feel somewhat like normalcy. 

She was wrong. 

Juliet had expected for it to require some control – to not be easy. She hadn’t expected it to feel like torture. 

The first thing was the scent. Slamming into Juliet like a living, crawling wave – thick like burnt sugar, sweet on the tip of tongue. It was enough to make her wobble on her feet – heels clicking softly under her on the stairs of the precinct. It was enough to make her realize how deeply cold she had felt since that night. 

What kind of difference blood pumping and lungs working can do. 

She gulped down air she didn't need, and marched on – but it was everywhere. Warmth. Body heat. People. 

_Blood._

It was more than a scent and not exactly a taste – a pressure pulsing against the back of her head, tingling down the vertebrae of her spine. It was one, and yet she could sense infinite layers of difference under it – as her colleagues and uniforms and suspects ran around her in the methodic chaos of the PD. Some people smelled like fresh soap and green grass, like mint toothpaste; others had the dizzying scent of smoke, blood feeling thick and dusky like tobacco, and others tasted like cotton candy. The sheer variety of it made her lean against one of the pillars three times on her way across the room. 

Panic crawled up her throat. That was not going according to the plan. She had been a fool _, a fool, a fool_. They would see. She was shaking, strange, brutal shivers rattling through her bones. It felt like something was trying to get free from her chest, tearing out her ribcage in the process. 

She tried to focus on voices, on the rustle of folders passed over the desks and the regular _click-click_ of people typing away at the computers. But she could barely make them out. There was a sound, rising deep from the ground, swallowing everything. Thundering – a dizzying cascade of echoes, endlessly multiplied. it sounded oddly familiar. It called her. Juliet took a second breath, hiding in a shadowed nook by the info counter. Listening. 

Realization hit her like a blow to the jaw. 

_Heartbeats._ Dozens, hundreds of heartbeats – overlapping, racing, mixing, as many as the people in the building. They came from all around her, fluttering like butterflies against her skin. Her stomach clenched – hard and hungry, clawing at her to get to it. 

Behind her lips, her teeth pulsed – hurt. 

_Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God._

It took Juliet every scrap of control to cross the main hall and stumble to her desk. She crashed on her rolling chair – the plastic joints of the wheels squeaking under the pressure. She pushed back the knick-knacks and papers littering her desk, her small plastic bunny and the mug holding a bunch of spare black and blue pens and the Halloway report she had been working on, and leant her elbows against it, head in her hands. 

Focusing on the veins of the wood. Clawing at her scalp till her body stopped twitching with rage and hurt and longing and she could think through the echo of hundred heartbeats. 

She heard him coming. Or better, she _felt_ him. The rhythm of classic shoes on the linoleum, the smell of fabric softener soaking up his shirt, cologne and leather. 

Juliet closed her eyes, and realized she could picture him – heat coalesced in long legs and straight shoulders. Pulsing with life, humming with it. _Blinding_. 

Carlton reached her desk, slipping on one corner. A clack of paper against wood – a folder chunked impatiently in front of her. 

"You didn't take any of my calls." 

This time, Juliet couldn't prevent herself from flinching. She looked up, eyes snapping open, and found herself in front of Carlton Lassiter, sipping coffee and looking somewhere between mad and worried. 

It felt like a punch. She had not been so close to anyone since Saturday night – and Carlton's presence slammed into her, hot and overwhelming. She could see the heat roll out of him in waves – like a pale-pink glow shrouding his skin. 

It smelled so good. Sweet and warm, running under his skin – just a touch away. Blood. Carlton’s blood. 

The collar of his shirt was perfectly starched, tight around his throat – the black tie neatly tucked under its lapels. She watched him take another sip from his mug, eyes never leaving hers, and felt her gaze fall on the bob of his neck as he swallowed. 

She felt the wood splinter under her nails, and realized she was digging them in the desk. 

_To keep from moving._

_To keep from_ leaping. __

"O'Hara?" Carlton tilted his head to the side – lips pinched, scrunched eyebrows. Regular troubled Lassiter. 

She didn't like the idea of him looking troubled. She liked even less the idea of her being the reason he looked troubled. She was going to make him even more upset if she keeps going into mental loops and not answering. 

"I... I'm sorry, Carlton," she said. That much was true. "I didn’t feel well. I… stayed in bed all day. " 

"Oh.” His face turned softer. "You should have called. Could have helped." 

For a moment, the hysteric laughter she had pushed down for two days crawled up her throat – scraping it like metal filings. She had to chew on her bottom lip to clamp it down. 

_Oh, how I wish you could have helped, Carlton. Swoop in, guns blazing – telling me there’s nothing to fear. That we’re too tough not to fix this._

"Uh... no. No, no problem Carlton. I managed." 

Barely. Probably. Hanging on my sanity with a tube of lipstick and not much else. 

Carlton propped the mug on his knee, and let his eyes of his trail over her – scanning and checking and thinking. 

“You still look real pale.” He sniffed. “And you’re distracted. You sure you didn’t catch some nasty bug lurking in Spencer’s pest-infested lair? I don’t want you to pass me that bonehead’s germs.” 

She found herself rolling her eyes before realizing it. It felt so familiar it nearly made her cry. “It happened _one time_ , Carlton. And I’m okay.” A pause. The laughter nearly spilling through her gritted teeth. “Really.” 

Carlton grumbled, muttering to himself, but didn’t move from his spot on her desk. And Juliet needed him to move. She really, really needed him to move. 

She could feel her fangs pulse and smart behind her lip, nicking the flesh. She let her eyes roam around the room, glide over the rows of desks and heads, looking desperately for something to fasten on that wasn’t her best friend’s neck. 

Then he leant in, and everything very nearly went to Hell. 

The scent was everywhere. She clenched her muscles, nails clawing at the desk, and still the urge to sniff – to smell it – was overwhelming. _Unbearable_. She inhales, filling her lungs, a pulsing fluttering on her tongue. Steady and strong and regular. 

_Ah, of course,_ Juliet thought, dazedly. _Of course it sounds like this_. Carlton’s heartbeat, so close she felt it against her teeth. She suddenly knew she would never forget it. Never mistake it. 

Juliet felt a sigh tear out of her throat, deep and shaky. The world was fading around the edges – losing importance. Losing colors. She saw Carlton scowling, craning his lanky figure to look in her eyes, but it was just smudges of blue and red. 

“O’Hara?” he asked. 

She didn’t answer. She was looking at the collar of his shirt, the triangle of shadow running between fabric and skin. She could nearly see the artery there, feathering under the pale skin, pumping blood. 

Bleeding red, red all over her eyes. 

“O’Hara.” The voice was stern, tinged with annoyance – but she saw his eyes widen a fraction, the bob on his throat as he swallowed. He was shifting, turning fully towards her. He was coming closer. 

Juliet’s hand moved so fast it didn’t even register as movement. There was just a whoosh of air, and suddenly her fingers were closed around his wrist – pressing down. Pressing _too hard_. 

Carlton froze. She could feel his pulse under her nails, picking up in alarm. She could imagine leap on the other side of the desk, and slam him on the ground, and tear out his throat as she gulped down mouthfuls of blood. 

They would never be able to stop her in time. 

"O'Hara..." he was talking. Swallowing. "Juliet..." 

_Juliet_ . He almost never calls her Juliet – even now, when she's sure he would gladly lay down his life for her. O'Hara is routine. Is coffee shared over poorly-muffled yawns and recounts of the marathon of Cops from the night before, is leaning against his shoulder at the end of an Actually Shitty Day. Juliet is for bad business. It’s for calls in the middle of the night \- and whispers so soft and shaking they almost sound like sobs. It’s for confessions, and cries of help. 

Hearing it now nearly undid her. Nearly unraveled her, makeup and contact lens and any strip of pretense she had painted on her face, leaving just, just – 

Blood. Want. The feeling of his pulse close enough to gnaw on it. 

"Juliet." He said it again. The stubborn dork. Her best friend. "You're... so cold." 

Juliet sucked in air. It felt as if his words had made it true. She did feel cold. She felt it tingle in her fingers, in her dead skin – in her dead heart. Could he sense it? Is there something exquisitely, deeply animal wedged into human beings, telling them when they're near something dangerous – near a monster? Was he going to figure it out, just because he was Carlton Fucking Lassiter, Head Detective of SBPD? 

Juliet hissed out a breath. She realized she was still holding his wrist. If she didn't stop right now, she'd feel his bones grind together under the skin. She'd leave bruises. 

Juliet let go of him like touching his skin is like touching fire, and shot to her feet. "I'm gonna," she gasped. Clutched the wood, stared at everything but him. "I'm gonna go to the restroom." 

" _Juliet –_ " 

She didn't let him time to talk. She could already feel her resolve crumbling, her throat closing – and wasn't that humorous, for someone who didn't have to breathe anymore? 

He called her again. She didn’t answer. She simply turned, crossing the precinct, ignoring the eyes following her – the rumble of pulses shivering around her. She kept her eyes firmly pressed on the alternating rhythm of her feet, and crashed through the ladies’ restroom door, and half-fell in front of the sinks - hands clinging to the ceramic. She gulped down air, out of habit, because not doing it would mean staying there perfectly still, like a pot plant or the mirror frame, and that was an _otherness_ she couldn't deal with yet. She lifted her head to check herself in the mirror. 

The makeup was still in place – blush and pink lip-gloss shining on her lips. The contact lens blue, perfectly natural. 

She thought about Carlton's face staring at her, the feeling of his wrist under her fingers. In a ring around the iris, her eyes were burning red. 

Three weeks later, the red is still there. Juliet feels it lurking on the outer edge of her vision – flaring as soon as he comes closer. Pushing away the thoughts coming with the red is wearing her out. It’s wearing both of them out. She can see it. 

Carlton thinks he’s doing a bang-up job at sneaking worried glances at her every time she’s not looking, but he’s never been great at sneaky. 

She glimpses him looking up from his desk, head tilted towards her, the clicking of fingers tapping on the keyboard frozen. She feels the pressure of his eyes against her scalp – the echo of his pulse against her teeth. 

Juliet shoots to her feet so fast the chair screeches against the floor. She has to call on every ounce of control in her body not to leave claw marks in the desk. She twists, stumbling between the desks – slamming the break room door behind her. She needs out. She needs to put space between them, or he’ll come to talk to her, call her Juliet, ask if he can help. 

And she can’t say the truth, and he can’t not see it’s a lie. 

Juliet feels the glass door crack. She realizes she’s slammed her hand against it without knowing it. She curses, looking down. White spiderwebs spread across the glass, under her hand – skin untouched. 

_I’m doing it for us, Carlton,_ she thinks. She’s imagined those words so many times they feel like a prayer. _I’m doing it to keep you safe – all of you. You understand, right?_

_You know it, right?_

*** 

There’s something wrong with her. Something troubling her – consuming her from the inside. 

Carlton Lassiter has long since learnt not to trust his guts. It as risky business, and it has always done him more harm than good. Telling his mother she’s ruined a good chunk of his childhood and he wouldn’t let her ruin Lulu’s too was a sudden spurt of inspiration, and it resulted in his Mom’s hand making his cheek smart for weeks. Proposing to Victoria was a gut feeling, and kissing her goodbye on her terrible father’s porch on their first date too, and even showing up the restaurant with the best bouquet he could find and a smudge of cologne on his throat to get his heart more thoroughly broken. 

Spencer chortles about him being a robot with an old-style computer chugging data in his skull – but the fact is, Carlton needs hard facts because trusting his instinct usually leads to disaster. 

This time, though, he trusts his guts. He trusts the feeling of uneasiness that has steadily, aggressively grown in his stomach, like spider-webs of frost across a window. He trusts the cold that comes with that feeling, and that has never really left since Juliet has grabbed his wrist, three weeks and two days ago. 

He has tried his best not to get suspicious: to give her time, give her space. Dealing with humans – not to mention _actively_ _helping them_ – has always been mortal territory for him, a minefield no one gave him a map for. But Juliet, Juliet isn’t just _people._ She’s not been for a long time. 

She’s been willing to teach him, with infinite patience, and he has been willing to learn – to study and apply. He has learnt to recognize when he should talk and when he’s supposed to just shut it up, how she takes her coffee and which donuts he should save for her when he gets to work early. They have grown into a squad, a team, and as cheesy as it sounds every time he gets anywhere close to put it into words, he liked it. 

More than that, he suspects he has grown to need it. It was a big revelation – a first-class top secret, huge enough to make his bones shake. Carlton does with needing things almost as bad as he does with following his guts. Needing something feels as dangerous as keeping your fingers firmly clutched around a faulty plug, ten hundred times more dangerous than having a madman trailing a gun on your heart. 

And that’s why days like this drives him absolutely insane. 

Spencer loves to laugh about that too, saying Lassiter gets jealous like five-year-olds do, terrified of losing the only person they feel they will ever call friend. It’s a bit too close to truth not to hurt. 

And he suspects the idiot doesn’t realize it – doesn’t mean to hit so low. Besides, the sheer fallacy of Spencer’s accusations is enough to make Carlton twitch with annoyance – because rationally he can’t be _both_ jealous and a computer-brained android. 

(Once upon a time, he wished he was. Not exactly a computer, but a machine, something mechanical and sleek and blissfully empty, honed to perfection for one job and unaware of anything else. Efficient. Useful, finally really fucking useful, so the world would stop asking him to be _more_ or telling him he’s not _enough_.) 

It’s not like they never fight; but this time O’Hara isn’t angry – she’s not _here_. Not completely. Not with him, anyway. 

She doesn’t meet his eyes. Avoids touching – plastering against her car seat when they get on and off from one crime scene to the other, jerking away every time he brushes her shoulder leaning over to pour over a coroner’s report, as if his skin could scorch her to the bone. Poison her rotten. 

And there’s the _smiling_. O’Hara has always been a smiler: he’s seen his fair share of her smiles – seen her honing it into a pretty deadly blade, too. But lately her smile is all wrong. Tight, like the ones of ladies in vintage ads. She puts on that smile like she’d do with a shield, every time he gets too close or ask her what’s going on. 

As if dealing with a wacko. A wacko she’s not sure would not harm her – lay a hand on her. 

_O’Hara. Despite what Spencer has been prattling on for the best part of five years, I’m not a complete idiot. I know something’s off. I know something’s off with y_ ou _._

Smile. The sight of it makes bile crawl up Carlton’s throat. It doesn’t do anything to make her eyes look less sunken – less haunted. It doesn’t do anything to make her look any less pale. _I’m working on it, Carlton. Don’t worry about it._

_You don’t tell me what to worry about O’Hara. I’ll have you to know I can worry about every damn thing I want –_

_Carlton,_ she’d say, every time. Softly – as if talking around a lump stuck in her throat, tip-toing around shattered glass. _Don’t ask me. Please._ P _lease._

Every time, that does the trick. Every time, he lets it go – gulping down all the things he’d like to say. Clenching his teeth together, the familiar tendril of pain shocking through his brain – a well-deserved punishment. 

He’s feeling it now too, sitting in front of a computer he hasn’t even pretended to turn on. Reports are piling up on his desk – coffee rings multiplying from all the mugs he’s forgotten there or knocked over papers and shirts because he wasn’t paying attention. 

For the umpteenth time, he wonders if he’s done something wrong. Something terribly bad, so mean or callous or insensitive even she can’t forgive it. O’Hara has punched him in the arm the first time he’s told her this – she does that a lot; Carlton sports a semi-permanent bruise on his left arm from affectionate, frustrated jabs – bristling with indignation. She’s told him she was not like this, that she was not gonna give up on him without trying to work it out. But she’s been missing the point. 

People tend to grow frustrated with him; sooner or later, it happens. During one of the last fights, Victoria told him she was tired of fighting; like staying with him were some kind of battle, of never-ending siege. He supposed it’s more or less right. O’Hara has fought under his battlements for longer than anyone else, leading countless charges against his drawbridge; but he can’t rule out one day he’ll prove just too much effort and she will withdraw her army. 

He’s always known it could happen. He has no idea what he would _do_ if it happens. He feels stupid, ridiculously so – a man clutching stubbornly to a plug about to charge him up and stop his heart. But if Juliet decides she doesn’t want him anymore, he won’t say anything. He will gulp it all down, and act as he doesn’t care even as his chest implodes, because it would be the best thing for her. 

Because he wants the best thing for her. 

But, he will do it by his own means. If he’s about to get himself electroeluted to death, he’ll choose the when and the how. 

“O’Hara,” he calls her. It’s Thursday evening, the PD silent and half-desert, and they’re quietly bringing a bunch of bags to the evidence room. Steps and voices echo up the pillars like in a cathedral. They’re both carrying cardboard boxes, stuffed with sealed plastic bags with every kind of junk in them: screwdrivers, shoes, fountain pens, anything humans can use to stab each other. O’Hara is walking beside him, a bit in the front, a polite gap of two-three feet between their steps: not enough to look rude, far enough to make private conversation awkward. 

When he calls her name, she stops. Turns slowly, face so white it gleams faintly in the half-shadow. 

“Did I do something?” he asks, not letting himself taking a breath before blurting it out. Not letting himself dwell too much on the words, on their weight. “Or do you simply want to ask for a new partner?” 

She seems genuinely taken aback by this. More than that, she looks shocked – and a bit lost, too. It feels almost good, because he must look pretty lost too. “W-what?” she asks – coming closer. “Carlton, I don’t want anything of the sort.” 

“Then why the Hell you’re not even looking at me?” He turns, shoving the box on the bench stretching along the wall at his back – twisting back to face her fast enough to make himself dizzy. “I don’t want to know everything going on in your life, O’Hara – but this is starting to affect our work. _My_ work. And I can’t allow it.” 

“I told you,” she protests – whispers. He watches her balancing the cardboard box against one elbow, running a hand through her hair. “I’m dealing with it. But it’s… not that easy.” 

“Then let me help,” Carlton replies, more snappish than he’d like. “Sweet Justice, O’Hara, I know I’m not exactly the best with feelings and stuff, but I’m not totally useless _.” I hope. Please. Please, tell me I’m not totally useless_. “We’re good at being a team – we’re good at _this_. I… I can help. I _want_ to help.” 

A heartbeat of hesitation. He takes a step forward, voice dropping – one hand half-raised in an abort of touch. “You know that, right?” 

“I know.” She shakes her head – and puts one hand against his chest, pushing them back to the two-three-foot distance. “But… I don’t want you to help. I don’t want you to… get too close to this.” 

“ _O’Hara –_ “ 

“I want you to stay out of this. I n _eed_ you to stay out of this. Okay?” 

“No!” 

She looks up, finding his face. It’s the first time she’s met his eyes in weeks. “Do you trust me?” 

Carlton curls his hands into fists, feeling the nails sink and split the skin. Still, he can’t lie. Not to her, not on this. “Of course.” 

“Then… let it go. At least for now.” She presses her fingers against his shirt, lips trembling. “Please.” 

They stare at each other for a long moment, the evidence boxes and the world fading in the background. Slowly, oh so slowly, Carlton feels himself nod. He feels drained, tired. And there’s a spot of cold in his chest, spreading under Juliet’s touch, tearing a shiver out of him. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, O’Hara.” 

She smiles. “Thank you, partner.” 

She leans in, the movement quicker than one full heartbeat, and suddenly, there’s something wrong in her face. Lips parted, strangely colorless. A pale ring around her eyes, the color all wrong, and _how the hell didn’t he see the color was wrong before?_

And her perfume. Peaches, the one that has long since soaked up his car’s seats. Her perfume is gone. 

She’s cold to the touch. She’s never worn eye contacts. She doesn’t smell like herself. 

And she’s not staring at his eyes, no – but at his throat. 

A second shiver runs down Carlton’s spine. Faintly, distantly, it smells like fear. 

*** 

“There’s something wrong,” Shawn suddenly declares, “with Lassie and Jules.” 

Gus casts him a look. They’re slouching in the PD, sprawled on a couple of rolling chairs they’ve sneaked out of the break room and stationed beside McNab’s desk. From this spot, they get just the right amount of breeze coughed up by the air conditioner in the upper corner of the wall. Most importantly, from this spot they have a perfect view of the workstations of the detectives. __

_Their_ detectives. 

There’s no case. There hasn’t been any case from the station in nearly a month – nor any half-scuffle with Lassiter, any sweet smile or hair-rising electric moment with Jules. No nothing. 

It has been exactly twenty-eight days and six hours. Not that Shawn’s keeping track or anything. 

Gus tilts his chin towards the pair. “Which of them?” 

Shawn munches on the straw of his smoothie. Fastens his eyes on Juliet’s profile, head bent and shaking hands, a study in paleness. “Her.” He slides his gaze to Lassie’s gangly shape, scribbling away on a folder with enough force to punch a hole in the paper. “Him.” Shawn grimaces. “ _Both._ ” 

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Gus offers uncertainly. “Maybe they’re just stressed about some case. You know how they get when they’re stressed.” 

“C’mon. Jules is not that bad when she’s nervous.” 

“Mmh. The way I remember it, it has not been Lassiter the one throwing a binder at your head because you spilled your slushie on the McDonald’s report.” 

Shawn has really no counter-argument to that. Unconsciously, he traces the healing, binder’s corner-shaped bruise on his right temple. During the the years investigations they have known each other, Shawn and Gus have come to the conclusion that in many regards Juliet is actually as bad as Lassie – a fact the detectives seem unreasonably pleased by. 

Shawn takes a meditative sip from his smoothie. “I don’t know. They just look, _look_ …” 

“Bossy? Insanely competitive?” Gus cocks his head to the side. “Drinking amounts of coffee that would make normal people spontaneously combust in two days tops?” 

Shawn shakes his head. It’s a good joke, and a half-truth, but he can’t bring himself to laugh. He can’t bring himself to do anything but staring: at the light coming in through the precinct’s shutters, at the computers blinking in stand-by on their desk, at Lassie and Jules trying their hardest to peer at each other and not to get caught doing it. 

“ _Jumpy_. They look jumpy.” 

It’s weird, seeing them like this. It’s painful, in the subtle, treacherous way of a fever coming up with no warning – leaving you too disoriented to function. Shawn isn’t even ready to admit it to himself, but it scares him to see them like this. Lassie and Jules are supposed to write reports, chug down coffee, scream at him and Gus not to touch anything and rush in to save them at the last possible moment. That’s the way things work. That’s the way things feel _good._

Gus has gone quiet, too. He either realized Shawn’s mind has gotten snagged on a problem and simply won’t let go, or he’s starting to feel a bit concerned himself. Probably a bit of both. 

Then he sets his Bubble Tea on McNab’s desk, and pushes himself closer, the chair’s wheels whirring softly across the floor. “You think they had a fight?” 

Shawn shakes his head. “Nope. The pattern doesn’t match. They’re not glaring at each other, I’ve seen no trace of folders mixed up on purpose or other petty revenges, and they haven’t dropped one passive-aggressive comment the whole morning.” 

“The _pattern_. You should really stop binging Criminal Minds, Shawn. You can’t _profile_ them.” 

“Well, you can profile your ass.” 

“That doesn’t even make sense.” 

Shawn clasps his lips – and suddenly feels a shot of pain rippling all the way to his skull, like a sparkle shocking his brain. He scowls. He remembers his father looking like this – giving himself epic stress-migraines from grinding his teeth together like a freaking steamroller. He remembers Lassie’s pinched face as he chugs down aspirin for the same reason. 

Shawn has never gritted his teeth. Never given himself a headache out of stress. 

_Sometimes, caring is a bitch. A real bitch._

“She doesn’t laugh at my jokes, Gus,” Shawn says after a while. “She doesn’t smile when I tell her she looks good. He doesn’t growl when I peer into his files. It feels so wrong. It feels so very _wrong_.” 

The gulp of smoothie gets stuck in his mouth, sticky and flavorless. He suddenly can’t stand the taste of it. He crushes the plastic in his hand, throwing it in the bin with more force than necessary, and feels something closer to rage mounting in his veins like foam. He’s angry at Lassie and Jules, at his father and all the teeth-clenching cops of the world, at Gus for not saying he’s got it all wrong and everything’s okay. At himself, for not being able not to care, or for not being able to do a damn thing about it. 

Shawn is choking anger – practically sees it pouring out of him, in concentric rings. Gus must see it too, because suddenly he’s standing – rubbing a hand against his perfect chocolate head, and turning to Shawn like he’s half-annoyed not to find him already on his feet. 

“Okay,” he says, “let’s go.” 

Shawn blinks. “Uh?” 

“If I don’t find a way to stop this madness, you’ll skulk around the station like some creepy stalker all day,” Gus explains, matter-of-factly, “and you’ll keep sadly watching them being sad. I think half of the squad in some miserable stupor is more than enough. So, we’re going to corner Lassiter. Now.” 

“But – “ 

“ _Now_. While he looks too depressed to pull a gun on us.” 

Shawn blinks again – the promise of headache receding. He smiles at Gus. The smile feels crooked, held together with tons of duct tape, but it’s a smile, and stays, and feels good. 

“I would kiss you right now, Gus.” 

“Please, _don’t_.” 

*** 

When they manage to actually get Lassie alone, Shawn is honestly afraid Gus’s hypothesis proved a bit too optimistic. 

The detective _does_ look ready to pull a gun on them. Or to directly stab them with those laser beams he has in place of eyes, maybe. 

“There’s no a chance in Hell I’m gonna confess anything remotely private to you two simpletons,” he hisses through his teeth. “ _Got it_?” 

Shawn and Gus get it. Still, they’re not moving. Cornering Lassiter has proved more difficult than expected – mainly because the Head Detective seemed even less inclined than usual to leave his desk. They had finally seen an opening when he got up to spike up his coffee with an ungodly amount of cream – pouncing on him before he could get out of the break room. Shawn closed the door behind himself, Gus pulled down the shutters. In a sync honed through years of shared life and three-legs races, they crowded on Lassiter, smiling and unfaltering, coming close enough to force him to step back and bump into the coffee counter. 

Trapping himself between the wall and their grinning, silent presence. 

Admittedly, they have probably been more disturbing than strictly necessary. 

When he’s found himself trapped, Lassie has turned into a perfect sculpture of granite – face pale with righteous anger, lips pressed in a line, shoulders painfully stiff. 

Still, Shawn doesn’t fall for it one moment. 

“Drop it, Lassie,” he blurts out, brutally. “You need help. We’re here to provide it.” 

Lassie’s eyes widen. Their touch turning scorching. “What do you make you think I would even – “. 

Shawn heaves a sigh – full of frustration. Low blow, blunt and dirty – because he knows there’s really no other way for this to work. 

“You’re pale, Lassie,” he cuts him off. “And not your usual, Irish-warlord pale – but seeing-your-skull-through-the-skin kind of pale.” Shawn jabs with one finger, pointing at the mug in Lassiter’s hand, at the fingers clutching its handle to white-knuckled point. “You’re sleeping shit, because the coffees McNab delivers are not enough, and you’re forced to fetch them yourself – and you’re not eating either, because it’s been years since you choked your drinks with so much cream just to keep yourself going. You’re distracted, sloppy. You’ve barely finished one report in the last two hours.” Shawn hesitates, for the ghost of a second. _Last blow._ “And you and Jules barely exchanged a word since this morning.” 

It feels exactly as if Shawn has just slapped him. He watches Lassiter turn even more livid, last drops of blood rushing out of his face, and reel – actually _reel_ – from the impact, clawing at the counter to keep himself up. He watches the uncertainty, the flash of hurt in his eyes, and feels bile roll up his throat. 

You would think it would feel good, getting a final, serious upper hand on Lassiter. Instead, it feels like most part of this day – so absolutely fucking _awful_. 

_Dammit, Lassie. You just had to make me be mean, eh?_ He thinks, angry again, both at the man in front of him and at himself. _You just couldn’t pass the whole I-don’t-need-you bullshit, could you?_

Silence falls – broken only by the shuffling feet on the other side of the shutters, the faint _whoosh whoosh_ of the fans. Gus looks pained. Shawn’s mouth tastes like chalk. 

It doesn’t last more than one, two beats – then Lassiter is pulling back on his feet, straightening as much as physically possible, as if nothing has happened. Clutching his fingers around the mug, so they won’t see them shaking from exhaustion. 

“Are you still in denial mode, Lassie?” Shawn asks, aiming for light, but coming through way more like what he actually feels – pissed and frustrated. 

Lassiter’s jaw is working. Shawn sees muscles feather in his cheek. “I’m _never_ sloppy with my job, Spencer,” he replies, slowly. “Don’t you dare to accuse me of that ever again.” 

This throws Shawn for a loop – because he didn’t except it. He falters, and meets Lassie’s eyes. Going for the truth. “I would never do anything like that, Lassie” he says. “I know you’re _not_. And I know you care for Jules. And I know there’s something wrong with you, or with her, or with both, and that I want to know what is.” Shawn bits down on the inside of his cheek. Hard enough it hurts. “ _Please_.” 

Silence. Lassiter stares at him, body tightly-coiled, muscles tensed to breaking point under his shirt – in the curve of his back. And, Shawn realizes, feeling nausea in his throat, Lassiter _himself_ looks at breaking point. Like the slightest pressure, the barest touch could shatter him in a million pieces. 

Shawn prays not to be that touch. He desperately prays not to be that touch. 

“Why don’t you ask O’Hara, then?” Lassiter hisses. 

Shawn chews again on his cheek. “Because… Because she doesn’t really talk to me anymore.” 

Saying it makes it more real – unbearably so. Saying it makes remember him how much he misses her. But there’s no other option. Neither of them would settle for less than the absolutely truth. 

Lassiter grows perfectly still, searching through Shawn’s face, his stance, his voice. Then he runs one hand through his hair, and slumps back against the counter. 

“Well, this makes two of us,” he says with a sigh. He suddenly looks exactly as exhausted as he is. 

Shawn steals a quick glance at his best friend, trying to get his attention. Gus’s eyes keep flicking from Shawn to Lassiter and back, as if he can’t decide if offering to help him would get him a bullet hole in the arm or not. 

In the end, he seems to decide the intention’s worth the risk. Shawn watches with bathed breath as Gus lays one hand on Lassiter’s shoulder, lightly, and give the smallest squeeze – a friendly reminder of his presence. 

With a certain amount of wonder, they realize Lassiter is not shrugging him off. With a certain amount of concern, they realize he’s actually almost _leaning_ into Gus’s touch. 

“Tell us, Lassiter,” Gus says – quietly. Gently. “Tell us what’s going on.” 

Lassie heaves a second sigh. He sets the mug on the counter, curling his fingers around the edge of the counter, and bits at his lip. The gesture makes his face softer, younger. Under the butter-yellow glow of the neon lights, Shawn can see how sunken his eyes really are – the shadows cast by his cheekbones. 

“It started three weeks ago.” Lassiter’s voice catches him off guard – pulls him back from his thoughts. “After the weekend. She called in sick on Monday. I called her to know if she needed anything. She didn’t answer any of my messages – any of my calls. The morning after I tried to talk to her, but she dodged every single question. I don’t know what’s wrong, but she’s. She’s _changed._ She’s not eating. She’s not talking. She’s barely _here_.” He racks both hands in his hair, viciously this time, hard enough Shawn feels vaguely worried he’s scraping at his skull. “She says she’s taking care of it. That she needs time. She says she don’t want me to get too close to it.” 

“But you want to know,” Shawn offers. 

“I’m her _partner,_ ” Lassie replies, in the tone people uses titles, or prayers – as if the simple word holds in it every explanation they could ever need. “She’s _O’Hara_. I look out for her. I _have_ to know.” 

_My God,_ a voice screams in Shawn’s head, without warning, _my God, he does love her. He’s consuming himself for her. He loves her – as much as_ you _love her._

The thought is immense, brutal. It hits him like a punch in the teeth. It pulls at his chest, a surge of _feeling_ so strong it hurts. 

The feeling is for the detectives, that much he knows. Which of them, he’s not sure. 

Shawn sucks in a breath. 

“Well,” he offers, kicking amicably at Lassiter’s calf. Schooling his voice in some semblance of nonchalance. “Last time I checked, you were a detective, dude. An investigator.” 

Lassie arches his eyebrows. Seeing him grow annoyed feels almost good. 

“Then, you can _investigate_ ,” Shawn finishes, rolling his eyes. “Gus and I offer our estimated contribute to your efforts. Like, when you bring the movie and your friends bring popcorns and Pop Tarts. Except in this case you bring a gun and a badge and we bring – “ 

An elbow sinks in his ribs. Gus is casting him a look. Shawn is proficient in the remarkable list of Guster’s Looks, and this one specifically reads as “Shut the trap while you still can.” 

Shawn obliges. 

“I _can’t_.” Lassie kicks one foot against the counter’s metal flank. If he were anyone else, Shawn would say he’s _pouting_. “I told her I won’t stick my nose in it till she says so.” 

Shawn’s head jolts up – spine straightening, muscles ready to jump. “Oh,” he whispers, grinning, “Oh. But you _promised_ not to, Lassie?” 

A pause. Lassiter’s eyebrows scrunch together, slowly. “Not – “ 

“Then there’s no reason you can’t do some research,” Shawn counterattacks, “that _we_ can’t do some research. Also, it’s not like you have to _technically_ stick your nose in it. Although with your nose Lassie that’d be kind of har –“ 

“Spencer, I think you don’t really want to get into a debate about nose sizes.” 

Shawn nobly ignores the snort from Gus’s direction. “– Point conceded, Lassie-face. Anyway, as I was saying, you don’t have to get involved. You can just… sniff around. Check on her. See what’s going on – from a distance.” 

By the time he finishes, Lassiter is gaping – jaw hanging and eyes large with disbelief. He’s arching his eyebrows so _hard_ they’re grazing his hairline. “Sweet lady justice,” he breaths out, “so that’s how you twist things to justify you crashing our cases?” 

There’s a touch of authentic wonder in his voice. Shawn exchanges a look with Gus – smiling proudly. 

“Absolutely.” 

“Good grief.” 

Shawn jabs again at Lassiter’s leg. “Don’t be so dramatic, Lassie-pants. You know I’m right.” 

The detective frowns. “I don’t like the idea of lying to O’Hara.” 

“You’re no lying to her. You’re… working the angles. This one time. For a good reason.” He pushes again, voice turning honest. “Lassie…. Please. You’re making each other miserable. You need this.” Shawn scraps at his nape. “ _I_ need this. And don’t tell me you’re not scared.” 

Lassiter doesn’t deny it. He simply grows pensive, still prodded on the edge of the table, but he looks more _here_ already – eyes a bit brighter, a shade of pink flooding his cheeks. He taps quietly against the mug, and again he looks jarringly young – jarringly human. 

_I’m growing sappy,_ Shawn thinks, with a twinge of panic. _I need to fix this, now._

_I need to fix_ them _._

“Okay, Spencer.” Lassiter suddenly says. He pushes himself on his feet, straightens the collar of his shirt. He sounds grim, and unhappy, but under the neon lights, he no longer makes Shawn think of a skin-wrapped skull. “I’m in.” 

Shawn lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

“Glad to have you on board, Lassie.” 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juliet seeks answers, and hearts break.

Finding them has been easier than Juliet thought. 

She had no idea there were others, here in Santa Barbara; actually, she realized, she had tried her hardest not to _consider_ it. She should have realized there was at least another one, because he attacked her, and that it was highly improbable he was the only one: but, simply put, Juliet tried to think of that night the least humanly possible. It was a time of hazy darkness, of pain, of madness. Sometimes she wakes up – because apparently, she still has to sleep and can still dream – with the taste of blood on her lips and her neck pulsing in pain, but that’s all the space she’s willing to let that night take in her existence. After all, the bite marks have long since faded. 

Everything fades from her skin, these days. It’s just too strong. 

Tonight, though, she knows she can’t go on like this. She’s sitting on her kitchen floor, back to the counter, the open door of the fridge and a scattering of her black-and-white tiles soaked through with empty blood bags and bright-red smears. She sneaked some of them out of the morgue, got some more at the blood bank – flashing her badge and dodging questions. She’s tried to keep it quiet, to time them so they would last – but tonight she barely made it here in time. Her car broke down in the middle of the SBPD parking lot, and she’s spent the ride home in Carlton’s car pinned to her seat, clawing at the leather to keep herself from breathing in – which, considering she doesn’t have to really breathe anymore, sounds kind of ridiculous. But it was two days since the last bag, and she was hungry, so hungry, and his smell was everywhere, warm and sweet and cologne-scented – throbbing in time with the pulse in his neck. When he leant in to open her door in front of her lawn, all she could bring herself to do was tear the car door handle out of his fingers and hurl herself out. 

She didn’t even look back, running up to her door. Her hands were shaking around the keys. She’ barely made it to the fridge before ripping through her bags. One, three. Five. 

They were supposed to last for a week – nine days, if she took care. Now her kitchen looks like a gruesome, gore-smeared crime scene, the hinges of her fridge hanging loose from the sheer force she opened it with, and she’s still _hungry_. 

Juliet pushes the heels of her hands against her eyes, hard enough to see colorful spots quiver into existence behind her eyelids – waiting for the images replaying in her minds to fade out. Carlton’s throat, a strip of bare skin between chin and shirt collar – the artery feathering there. Yanking him forward, in the private dark of the car interior, bending him over the seats they’ve joked and talked and shared coffee on, throat stretched wide. Her teeth puncturing through the skin, soft as butter – arms keeping him still. Blood. Rich and alive and burning bright, going faster, _faster_ – 

Juliet groans – presses harder, nails scraping at her skin. 

_Facts_ , Lassiter’s voice reminds in her head. _Facts, O’Hara._

One. This is getting worse. 

Two. She’s nearly _eaten_ her partner. 

Three. She has a problem. 

Working is growing nearly unbearable. The Psych Office feels nearly as bad – or as good. Shawn’s and Gus’s blood smell different from Lassiter’s – sweeter, not as hot. She’s found herself staring at the glimpse of collarbone peering from Shawn’s t-shirts, the triangle of tanned skin, and thinking that drinking from him must feel like mixing Coke and Whiskey – heady, bubbles on her tongue, the taste of delicious teenage sins. 

With Shawn, it’s always about the prohibited. 

_No,_ she tells herself. Roars at herself. She’s pushing at her cheeks hard enough to leave marks. _No, no_. 

There’s no way this can end well. She needs help. 

_Help,_ she calls out – in her head, with every inch of her soul. _Help. Help. Are you there?_

It feels like hitting a switch in her mind, cracking a door open somewhere in the back of her skull. She calls again, right through that door – louder. _Are you there? Are you there?_

Nothing. Dark. Silence. Blood. Till suddenly, there’s something pushing back. 

Smell and voices and thoughts and sounds, all mixed together – prickling up her skin like a gust of spring-scented wind, a waft of dark. She can almost see it: lurking in the corners of her darkened kitchen, in the starlit night out of her window. A shadow of a different consistency, hovering midair, branching out like a spider-web. 

Like a trail. 

Calmly, methodically, Juliet pushes herself on her feet. She closes the fridge door, and walks out on her porch, towards the hovering trail of darkness. She can feel the blood drying around her mouth, on her hands, clotting on her silky stockings and ruining them for good. She doesn’t bother to wipe it away. 

After all, if this damn thing is working the way she thinks it is, the people she’s walking towards wouldn’t mind. 

Juliet climbs down the steps, and turns on the road, feet shoeless, soundless. Leaving her home, with the bathroom night-light still glittering blue behind the window panes, with her collection of untouched herbal tea bags in the upper counter drawer and the fluffy flowered comforter, feels a bit like she’s leaving behind something important. Ounces of innocence. A last shard of her humanity, perhaps. 

She doesn’t dwell on the relief the thought gives her. 

*** 

The building is barely more than ruins, the abandoned site of a match factory from the Sixties in the east side of Santa Barbara. With her new eyes, Juliet sees the small ruddy bricks of the façade, darkened with smoke and age, the crumbling silhouette of the chimney against the summer sky, the characters of the company’s name painted in yellow over the gates. Since her change, the way she looks at the world changed too: the things lined in silver, some colors seeping out of the picture, like some strange form of color blindness. She wonders if colors have something to do with having a beating heart. She wonders if the privilege of seeing through the dark, of walking a sleeping city’s streets knowing there is nothing that can hurt you lurking in the shadows, simply comes with a price. 

The smear of darkness is still floating in front of her, winding past the unhinged gates, across the courtyard – growing thick and pulsing around the factory’s doors. Juliet follows it. Under the starlight, the broken bottles littering the courtyard burn like diamonds, oozing cheap liquor on the concrete. 

She reaches the inner doors, and pushes them open – the metal rubbing rust flickers on her fingertips. No one stops her. Inside, the room is large, warehouse-sized – the ceiling high like a cathedral’s. Squares of faint light push through the film of dirt lining the windows, smearing across the white-washed floor. Most of the glass panes broken, some gaping like bruised eyes. Strangely, a green vine has managed to crawl down one corner of the wall, spilling from one windowsill and spreading like cracks in the ice; they’re covered in pink flowers, heavy with their honeyed scent. 

Now the darkness feels thick enough to choke her. She gulps it down, and in it she smells old blood, and dust, and wet earth, the clean clinical smell of metal. It isn’t pleasant. It isn’t familiar. And yet, under it all, under the blood, the chemical – 

Something close. Something _kindred_. Calling to her. 

Still standing by the doors, Juliet lets her eyes glide across the floor – peer in the distance. In the middle of the floor, there’s a single candle – burning. 

Silently, faces surface in its light. Pale, coalesced from the shadows. Many faces, young and old, round-shaped and harsh, ever-changing in the flickering glow of the candle, and with each a pair of dark eyes, staring at her. 

Juliet hears no heartbeat. The dark eyes glitter with red. 

“You need blood?” a man’s voice asks, simply. 

Juliet tilts her head to the side. The man is sitting on a chipped fold chair, arms crossed – wearing an oversized sweater somewhere between green and gray, a moth hole on the collar. Hair dark, greasy. At his back, a couple of kids are whispering into each other’s ear, head bent together, passing a cigarette. A woman is peering at her from the opposite side of the candle, leaning on the handle of a shopping cart peeling white paint and stuffed with wires and plastic bags. 

They look scrawny, bored. They look like hobos. 

_Hell,_ Jules thinks, feeling her jaw slowly unhinge in puzzlement, _Hell, they’re like me, and they look like freakin’_ hobos _. Sweet Lady Justice._

She swallows, hard. The usual burst of hysterics threatens to spill out of her throat. She watches them move, shift closer to take a better look, warily lean back, ready for a leap, and feels every drop of doubt – every scratch of hope – seeping out of her like water through the cracks of a glass. She’s right. These are no humans. No human moves that way – the motions lightning-fast, too seamless, or too jerky, like they could not quite remember how it’s supposed to be. How it’s supposed to _feel_. 

The dark-haired man is frowning – sliding off his chair. He starts towards her. His face gleams like a skull, covered in a gray film of filth. The sweater is so threadbare is whooshing around his hips – jeans caked with grim, feet shoeless. A waft of scents hits her nostrils, and nearly make her gag. It smells like dust, of layered filth, cloying – the smell of abandoned buildings, leaking pipes. The smell of forgotten things. 

Juliet feels bile on her tongue. How long has it been since he changed – since they all changed? How long since they ate an ice cream, licking every sugary drop off their fingers, since they spent a day soaking up sunlight down at the beach, since they looked at their friends without seeing pumping blood and soft warmth? Has it been long enough to forget all about it? To grow so _other_ not to even pretend anymore – to let your life fall in pieces around you like an old sweater? 

_Is this what’s supposed to happen to her?_

The thought seizes Juliet’s throat, squeezing. She realizes the man is still walking, less than a good jump from her, and forces herself to focus. It’s hard not to lose yourself in your thoughts, to keep track of time with no breath and no pulse to tick it off with. She has to focus. She has to push it all back, any explosion of madness and panic, at least until she’s fixed a couple of things, until she’s back at home, with the blue night-light and the flowered comforter. 

Her fingers rush up her side, digging in her jacket pocket, and close around her badge. She traces the familiar engravings on the front, the nick on the side from her first shootout. She remembers that day. She remembers Carlton carefully picking it up from the ground, her newbie ass still shaking by their car at how close the bullet had come to tear through her ribs. She remembers him closing her fingers around the badge, and she feels pathetical, and she feels a bit more like herself. 

She clutches at it, the metal and the leather. Smears it with blood. 

“You heard me, doll?” the man asks. He talks slowly, drawling the words. When he opens his mouth, she glimpses a flicker of white, the wet red of his tongue almost obscene against it. _Doll_. Means he’s not only a monster, but a douchebag one. _Fantastic_. Or maybe he was alive when actual people called girls dolls. 

_Focus, O’Hara. Don’t go there. Focus._

“How do you know?” Juliet hears herself say. She hasn’t planned to ask questions. It’s training, resurfacing, taking the wheel. Blessed autopilot. 

The man grins. “You’re covered in blood, doll. And your heart is as dead as mine.” 

It’s painful. It’s terrifying. She looks down at her free hand, at the red staining it, the creaks of pale skin when movement made the crust of blood break. 

She jerks back, brutally. It’s so fast the world blurs around the edges. Her feet hit the wall at her back, and the man chuckles. 

“Yes,” Juliet answers, carefully. Talking feels hard, as if she needs to tear each word out of her chest. She straightens. Shrugs her shoulder, hoping he won’t realize how hard she’s shaking. “Yes. I need blood. This is growing… messy.” 

_Messy_ . The mind is a treacherous thing, and her memory reaches back – pouncing on the image of Carlton leaning in to gentlemanly open her door, his warm throat a breath away from her teeth. She clamps it down, pushing it back where she won’t see it. She’s protective of it – jealous of it. In this place, with these people, she doesn’t like the idea of even thinking of him. 

“I bet.” The man’s grin grows wider. Then it falters, abruptly, flickering out of existence like a shadow in the water. “You’re the one who killed Frank. Who forced him to change you.” 

Juliet turns perfectly still. The world skids out of axis under her. 

_Did I kill him?_ She doesn’t remember enough of that night to be sure. She remembers the man-shaped thing bending her over the dryer, its whirr humming against her cheek as she cursed and fought and then started to cry, _no please, please stop stop_ , and she remembers thinking there was no way in Hell she’ll let them snuff her out like this. She remembers tearing through the skin of his neck with every scrap of strength in her dying body, and then drinking from it, more, and more, till he was whimpering under her and growing quiet and growing still. Then scattered flashes, the time between them lost in shadows. Pushing the body down a flight of stairs, the wet dark of the boiler room. Dragging herself to her door, body strangely weightless. Agony. Fire. Black. 

_Frank._ She’s not sure how it makes her feel, the fact that the man-shaped thing had a name. And Frank sounds absurdly homely, way too normal. Frank makes her think of truck drivers, blue collar family men mowing the lawn on Saturdays, at best of the beer-bellied, balding main suspect in some scandalous, repulsive little town’s murder. Not a monster of the night. Not this. 

“I guess,” she says to the man – voice hard as steel. She realizes she’s angry. She realizes she’s very angry. “To be fair, _Frank_ didn’t exactly leave me much of a choice.” 

The man isn’t smiling anymore. His eyes look old, ringed in red. “We don’t usually let unwanted fledglings run around as they please, doll,” he says. “You little things’re usually dangerous. Or mad. Or both. Running around like beheaded chickens, calling for trouble. We prefer to keep our ranks in order. Keep it clean.” 

Time stills. The man tilts his head, waiting. Juliet knows a threat when she hears one. 

She feels her body short-circuit – coiling up, ready to explode. This time, she lets it do the hell it wants. 

Juliet is snarling – lips pulled back, teeth clenched hard. She finds herself backing against the wall, half-crouched fingers curled into claws, and has no recollection of moving. She lets her eyes swipe over the man, over the pale faces fading behind him. 

She _growls_. An actual growl, tearing out of her like a blow to the throat, rolling out of her mouth like an earthquake wave. It sounds shrieking, the noise kids hear coming from the dark of their wardrobe. It feels powerful, a feral thing, a predator thing. _Good._

“You want to kill me?” she hisses, staring at the man’s old red eyes. Her mouth feels different, not quite shaped to use words. 

_I’m not going out like this._

The man gives a laugh – without warning. It feels like a gunshot ripping through the air – echoes rippling up the walls like wandering hands, prickling down her spine. Juliet curls her fingers around her badge, tighter, and keeps herself from flinching. 

The man casts her a glance. “You’ve drained one of us enough to kill him. It usually takes less than two sips to start a change. Your lovely little body gotta be ripping with power, doll. I think we can’t do nothing to kill you, short of cutting off each limb and burn them. And that’d be an awful lot of trouble.” 

He starts rummaging through his pockets, and pulls out a hand-rolled cigarette stump, munched and coming loose around the edges. He lights it up with a chunky silver zippo. He takes a drag, and Juliet sees his chest rise and fall for the first time since she walked in the factory. 

He jerks his head to the side, to one of the shadow-shrouded corner of the building, bluish smoke rising off his nostrils. 

“Come with me,” he says. Voice tinged with Southern tilt again, bored. “I’ll get you blood.” 

Juliet schools her features in a mask of perfect expressionlessness. She lets her eyes flicker to the crowd huddled around the candle, the rows of staring eyes. She doesn’t get up. “What about your friends?” 

“They do as I say. Come with me.” 

He takes another drag, the burning end of the cig casting shadows on his fingers, and points at the corner. He walks there swaying his hips, not looking back. Back exposed. 

She could probably jump on him and rip his back open before he can realize it. 

She would really, _really_ like to. 

Juliet clenches her jaw. Then she straightens, her back still to the doors. And follows him with a groan. 

In the corner rests a refrigerator – the kind they use in supermarkets or laboratories. It’s bulky and white, its electric buzz echoing softly in the ground. He pushes the lid open, and white light spills out, casting his face in sharp contrast. 

He turns to look at her, and in that moment the pretense is completely gone, and he’s not a man at all – but a creature made of bone and inked lines, no colors at all but that drop of blood in his eyes. She thinks of that first morning, when she looked at her reflex in the mirror and figured out how to look almost-human. Her mouth tastes like ash. 

Then he tilts his head to the refrigerator, she follows his gaze. And adrenaline rushes up her spine. 

Inside are bags of blood, heaps of them, nestled in a bed of ice. They’re standard medical bags, but also Tupperwares, glass jars, milk bottles, metal flasks. There are even little cards taped to them, scribbled with names, dates. Blood types. 

_You gotta be kidding me._

Her expression must be giving something out, because the man gives a shrug, sucking on his cig. “Some folk fancy one type more than the others. We got picky eaters too.” he offers. Then he nods to the bags. “You keep them somewhere safe. Fridge, if you don’t risk scaring the hell out of your beau – basement is good too. Let them warm up before drinking. You can microwave them too, if you’re a microwave person. Two a day. More, if you lose blood.” 

Juliet’s eyes snap back to him – widen. For the first time since she walked off her porch, she feels cold rush up from her bare feet. “I don’t need two bags a day,” she says, too fast. “I _don’t_. I can do just fi – “ 

“Two a day,” the man cuts her off. He smiles, showing too many teeth. “Trust me on this, darlin’. You don’t want to see what happens if you don’t get enough juice. And if you do lose blood of your own, if you get hurt… oh, bet ya don’t wanna see that either. Two bags a day.” The smile turns painful. “If you don’t want to go about it the old way, of course. I don’t judge.” 

Juliet is reeling. It feels like these weeks work in waves, reaching peaks where she thinks she can’t take anything more in and then receding into something almost bearable. Right now, she’s in the middle of a peak. And choking on it. 

She raises a hand, pushing it in the crack of the open lid – brushing the bags, the glass of a jar. The artificial cold is pouring out, rushing against her fingers, frosty enough to burn. Still, she has the impression the blood feels _warmer_ than the ice around of it. A seed of heat, of _life_ , calling to her skin through glass and plastic. 

_The old way._ She knows what he’s talking about. God almighty, she knows. 

“I’ve never bitten anyone,” she snaps out. She realizes what she’s said, tries again. “I _will_ never bite them.” 

“ _Them_ ,” the man drawls. He smacks his lips, tasting the treat. “So there _is_ someone you dreamin’ of gnawing on, doll. It’s worse with the ones you love, you know? They smell better. Taste sweeter, too.” He snuffs the cigarette against the lid of the refrigerator, eyes never leaving her face. “So, what’s that? You got a boyfriend, maybe? A loving brother?” 

Juliet thinks about Shawn’s handsome face, kissable lips grinning as he offers to carry her folders like a clumsy schoolboy at his first crush, about Carlton taking her out at their favorite waffle house on her birthday. 

_Neither. Both._

“This is nothing of your business,” she growls through gritted teeth. 

“You’ll be so formidable, doll,” He snickers, and she hates him so much it’s strangling her. “And you’re so funny. _So damn funny_.” 

She snatches her hand back. Feels the tip of her fingers buzz with the phantom heat of the blood, with want. “Just tell me how much I can take.” 

The man makes a sweeping gesture, like a magnanimous lord showing off a banquet. “How much you need, doll. And take the advice of an old man. Two a day.” He inches closer – his dead smell wrapping around her. “You’ve sucked one of us dry on your first night. How long do you think would it take to do the same to one of your precious, delicious humans?” 

The thought makes Juliet’s tongue dry up – turning into chalk in her mouth. If she was still a person, she’d probably be sick – curl into a ball and cry. Instead, she hears a second growl slip past her lips. It’s low and menacing – full of warning. 

“Very well,” she barks, every inch the monster in your wardrobe, every inch Carlton Lassiter’s junior partner. She shoves the man out of the way, with more force than strictly necessary, and grabs a handful of bags off their ice beds. When she hears him stumble behind her, she grins. 

“Can you get me a bag?” 

*** 

Juliet does get a bag. She gets a plastic supermarket bag and six containers between sacks and jars – enough for three days – and marches out of the abandoned factory with her loot dangling from her fingers. The right foot of her stockings got snatched on a bulging screw and tore up. She stills feel speckles of blood peeling off her eyelids every time she blinks. She doesn’t care. She simply walks across the glass-littered courtyard, and through the crumbling grates, and down the street she’s come from, towards home, the silence of the two in the morning perfect and polished around her. Her feet make almost no sound against the ground. There’s no breaths clouding in the cold. She can’t say where the night stops and her skin begins. 

She has nothing to fear about the night – so she doesn’t give a look at the expanse of old parking lots huddled around the factory. She doesn’t see the car sitting in the front row of one of them, the lines of white paint so faded they’re almost invisible. So she doesn’t notice the glimmer of movement behind the windshield, or the smell of stale coffee. The presence of a living heartbeat, slowly picking up speed. 

Behind the wheel of his Ford Fusion, Carlton Lassiter sits, frozen. 

He got here five minutes after O’Hara, making sure she has gotten inside the building before pulling in the parking lot, in classic stakeout gear: coffee thermoses, a pack of chewing gum – a secret, sinful pack of cigarette in case things grow completely unbearable. No food – he knew he won’t be able to keep down anything till he gets at the bottom of this. Till he knows what’s going on. 

And now _he knows._

He knows – _what?_

He knows he watched his partner jump out of his car like her life depended on it. He knows he watched her close her door behind herself, only to leave twenty minutes later – the dark already so thick he could barely make out her shape – and start to walk down the street at a brisk pace and with no apparent direction. And without shoes. 

He knows he’s just watched O’Hara walk out of an abandoned building in the industrial district of their city, holding a bulging plastic bag – and covered in blood. 

And Carlton has the sinking, gut-churning feeling it wasn’t _hers_. 

So either Juliet has just started a successful career as serial killer, or he’s losing his mind – or both at the same time. 

In any case, his partner is in some deep trouble. So deep and so bad he’s not sure even he – even _she_ – can fix it. 

Blood is pulsing in Carlton’s temples hard enough to hurt. Under its echo, his heart is cracking. 

“ _Lassie? You still there? Is this thing on?”_ Fingers tapping frantically – shooting down the line like gun shots. Voice buzzing on the other end. _“Ground control to Major Lassie?”_

Carlton slowly tears his eyes off the street, O’Hara barely a dot of pale movement lost in the shadows. He turns to the radio mic laying on the passenger seat like he’s not quite sure what he’s looking at. 

_Oh, yes,_ his mind supplies, numbly. _Spencer_. They’ve been talking – arguing – about the best time travel movies of the last three decades (the fools said Back to the Future; he stuck with Terminator just to piss them off). He’s almost forgotten they have been on speaker. 

He’s almost forgotten how this whole thing was supposed to go. 

Feeling like he’s moving through water, Carlton forces himself to reach out for the radio. He curls his fingers around the mic, brings it to his lips. 

His hand is shaking so hard it nearly slips out of his grasp. 

“I’m here,” he croaks out. Barely a whisper. 

The endless chatter of the two on the other side comes to an abrupt end. A muffled curse. Hushed voices – debating how to proceed. When he talks again, there’s a new edge to Spencer’s words. “Lassie, what happened? You sound like you just saw a ghost.” 

“Yes. I mean, no,” Carlton says. His voice sounds wobbly to his own ears. Very small, very careful – as if talking too loudly would shatter him in a million pieces. It probably would. “I… I don’t know what I saw, honestly.” 

Carlton Listens to the rustle of fabric, then more hushed voices, and can almost see them. Heads bent close, covering the mic with one hand, Guster squeaking as he whines reasonable advice into Spencer’s ear. After a time that feels like a couple of seconds and half a century, Shawn’s voice comes back, still hard. Still concerned. 

“Lassiter, you’re okay?” A pause. “Is Jules _okay_?” 

Carlton takes a deep breath. Pulse still throbbing in his veins, in his wrists. “I saw her, Shawn. She just walked out of the factory. She was carrying a bag. She was covered in blood.” Someone’s breath itches. It takes a moment to realize it’s his. “I don’t think it was _her_ blood.” 

Silence. Now he can clearly hear Guster’s whining in the distance, and he’s pretty sure his use of Spencer’s first name threw them out for a loop if nothing else had, but he doesn’t feel bad about it. He’s tumbling down a goddamn mountain, full of sharp rocks, head first, no helmet and no brakes. If Spencer really cares about O’Hara as much as he claims, he got to fall head first at his side. 

“Lassie, what the hell does that mean?” Spencer asks in the radio. His voice cracks in the car, electric, fills it. “ _What the hell does that mean?”_

Carlton shakes his head, knowing he can’t see him. He clutches the microphone, hard enough to feel the plastic squeak under the pressure. 

He’s still shaking. 

“It means we’re in trouble, Spencer,” he whispers. Swallows the fear, the grief, every single shiver rippling down his spine. “And that’s high time I do something.” 

*** 

Juliet recognizes his heartbeat even before she hears his steps outside her door. 

She looks up from her sink, the movement so sharp she feels bones clicking along her spine, and recognizes a spark of panic buzzing in her stomach. She knows better than to hope if she doesn’t open the door he’ll just go away. She knows better than not to expect him to keep knocking in that steady, stubborn way of his, call her in increasingly annoyed barks, and finally resolve to kick down her door. 

She’s not sure she can take that too, tonight. 

Juliet tears herself off the half-finished plastic bag, hastily washes her hands and mouth, and marches down her hall to face the tempestuous wrath of her best friend. 

The door clicks. She pulls it open. 

She’s known he would be angry – she picked it up from his pulse, from the very way he _feels_ tonight. She hasn’t realized to what degree. The Carlton standing on her threshold, cast in sharp contrast by her porch lamp, is all ice of burning eyes and clenched teeth, a storm barely contained in human skin. She can almost smell ozone hovering around him. 

He’s almost as pale as she is. Carlton Lassiter’s true rage isn’t red – but colorless. 

“O’Hara,” he says – snaps. She watches him curl his hands into fists, force himself to relax them. Pinning her with his gaze like a dead butterfly on cardboard. 

Juliet falters. One hand wraps around her doorframe, to ground herself. Blood is burning its way through her veins, but she feels icy cold. “Carlton…” 

Her voice is creaking. She tries again. She must pretend, play it like everything’s normal, but already she feels she won’t make it. That it’s useless. “…What, what are you doing here?” 

“Oh, nothing special,” he says, in the same strange, clipped tone, and pushes past her into the hallway. When his arm brushes against her, Juliet realizes he’s shaking. “I’m just checking on my trusted, industrious partner. We’ve been quite busy lately, haven’t we?” He stops a couple of steps in, and swirls on himself to look at her. In the half-dark of her house, in shirt sleeves and hair mussed from the day, he looks tired, and slightly desperate. “I suppose getting rid of blood-soaked clothes and visiting dingy abandoned factories is kind of a time-consuming hobby, after all.” 

The ground crumbles under Juliet’s feet. She actually expects the earth to tear apart under them, for the earthquake to strike – the carpet caving in, the photos hanging from the walls shattering on the floor, an endless chasm gaping open in the middle of Santa Barbara and swallowing it all. She half hopes it’s going to happen. 

She’ll take it, over this. 

_He saw me,_ she suddenly knows, and feels something between a wheeze and a sob push out of her lips. _He knows. My God, he knows._

_No. It can’t be. It can’t be it can’t be it can’t be._

She takes a step forward. He doesn’t back away, but his eyes grow colder – scorching. “Carlton…. What,” She swallows. “What did you do?” 

“What did _I_ do?” He gives a laugh. It’s not a nice laugh. “I followed you, O’Hara. After I dropped you home, I followed you – to check on you, to make sure you _were okay_ – and saw you leave without even putting your damn shoes, get across town in the middle of the night, and then waltz out of that junkie-infested rat hole with covered in _blood_.” He offers her a grin. Baring teeth. “I hope you’ll forgive my _concern_.” 

Juliet flinches at his tone – can barely bring herself to look at him. Carlton’s face looks sharp, a grimacing mask. Muscles contracted to the breaking point. Every softness banned. He’s growing mean, as every time he’s hurting so bad not even anger can make it better, and she hates when it happens. She hates being the one making him like this. 

It feels bad enough at it is. Then, Carlton’s words roll through her mind a second time, and Juliet’s mind finally grasp at them – at the implications of them. 

She feels her eyes widen. The cold spreading further – filling her chest. “You followed _me_?” she asks – thoughts reeling, putting pieces together. “You followed me to the _factory_?” 

She hears her voice shift, sound wrong – too low in the throat, too deep, rippling through air like a small thunder. She doesn’t care. She drops any pretense, gives up on any hope to fix this, to make him think nothing bad happened. There are images racing through her skull, flashing in oversaturated details. The shoe factory, the single candle burning at its center – the pale faces bathed in its light. Carlton, waiting for her in the parking lot, sitting in his car – shining like a supernova with his bright blood, his bright warmth. Close enough for the others to hear a heartbeat. 

Close enough for them to smell _him_. 

The realization of what could have happened rushes through her like an electroshock – leaving her mouth numb. It’s enough to make her lips pull back on her teeth, on her _fangs_ , and tear another sound out of her throat – and this time it’s a real roar. 

“ _Are you_ _completely insane, Carlton Lassiter_?” 

Something ripples across Carlton’s face – hurt, or shock, or both. 

She watches him take a step back. She hears his pulse throb under his skin. 

And charges again, bristling with a surge of brand-new rage. 

“ _Insane?_ I can still see the blood on your collar, O’Hara – you’re leaving trails of mud on the floor. You really think _I’m so damn stupid_ I won’t see?” He frowns, pushing a hand against his chest. “You really expected me not to _be worried_?” 

“I expected you to _listen to me_.” She’s talking through her teeth. She can feel her fangs pushing, enough to break skin. “I told you, Carlton. You, stay, out, of, this.” 

Carlton shakes his head “I can’t.” He looks tired again, fraying around the edges. “I can’t stay out of this, either I suspect foul play – or if I think you’re putting yourself in danger. You’re a detective. You’re my _partner_. You really don’t get it?” 

_Putting yourself in danger._ Juliet thinks about her teeth gnawing at Frank’s neck till they tasted blood, at how close to snapping Carlton’s wrist she’s come on her first morning back at work. 

She’d laugh, if she didn’t feel so damn cold. “Believe me, you don’t have to worry about me.” Her voice sounds empty to her own ears. 

“Tell me, O’Hara. Whatever that is, no matter how bad it is… tell me.” 

There’s a _please_ , stuck there under the surface. Pulsing with all the things they are for each other, all the things he let her glimpse. Saying no to that please is the hardest part of it all. It breaks something in her chest. 

“You can’t know, Carlton,” she says, less firmly than she would have liked. “You _shouldn’t_ know.” 

He flinches. He tucks out his chin, muscles twitching in his jaw. “I won’t let this go O’Hara,” he says. “The Psych is on this too – Spencer knows what’s going on. I’m thinking of going to the Chief, too. Request a warrant for that factory.” 

Something clicks in Juliet’s head. She’s still cold, frozen to mellow and bones, but there’s heat rushing through her veins – searing through her brain. _No._

Carlton, leading a squad of their people in the factory. Through the rusty gates, in the grimly-lighted cathedral she has been drawn too. Dozens of red eyes staring at their throats. 

_No._

She won’t have that. She won’t let that happen. She knows it with jarring certainty, as clear as a match flaring up, as the flipping of a switch. If it takes to grab him and lock him up in the station’s break room, safe from lewd eyes, the way you do with prized possessions, with rare porcelain vases and loved books and family heirlooms, then so be it. 

If it takes to be a monster, to make him hate her, so be it. 

She takes a step forward. She’s burning, the world narrowing around her, shifting perspective, and it must show somehow – because she sees his shoulders twitch, as if he’s fighting the urge to back away. Trust Carlton Lassiter to fight irrepressible human self-preservation. Trust him to be courageous – fucking dumb – out of stubborn loyalty. 

“I did nothing against law.” She takes another step. “You can’t accuse me of anything, and certainly can’t require a warrant.” 

“I don’t want to accuse you of anything, O’Hara.” He’s getting angry again. _Good._ “I’m trying to _help_ you. Maybe the Chief – “ 

“ _No_.” 

Juliet registers it in sounds. There’s her voice, rippling through the dark, all the way across the room – then wind whipping her cheeks, sucked out by the sheer speed of the movement, and his sharp intake of breath. The _clunk_ of his back hitting the wall, of the silver-framed photos on the cupboard rattling at the impact. The screech of her fingers dragging down the wallpaper. 

Time slows down, turns into water. Carlton is pressed against her hallway wall. She’s pinning him, not touching, hands on both sides of him. 

He’s blinking – pupils blown wide. This close, his eyes look startlingly pale, nearly colorless, like mirrors. Up this close she can almost see the smell of his blood, like a red-blue halo trembling in the shadows; feel his pulse pounding on the tip of her tongue. She suspects it’s more out of shock than out of fear. 

_It should be fear, Carlton,_ she thinks, angrily, desperately, _you should be scared. Be scared, dammit. Please._

“O’Hara – “ 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she says, _growls_. Nails chipping off strips off the wallpaper. “Why the hell can’t you let it go, just this _once_?” 

He gapes at her as if she’s gone mad. “Because I’m worried,” he growls back. “Because I care. I really don’t get you, O’Hara. You spent years pestering me about how important sharing personal stuff is. You spent years telling me you want me to know more about yours – to get it. Now I get it. Now I – “ 

“Maybe I don’t want it _anymore_.” 

The words are stupid – badly put, out of her mouth before she realizes it. Juliet don’t like them. She doesn’t think them. But still, beneath her Carlton grows stiff. She hears his heart skip a beat. 

And just like this, Juliet knows what she has to do. She can’t scare him – it won’t work. The glitch in cops’ heads make them run right in the middle of what scares them rather than get the hell out of there; the glitch in hers and Carlton’s head is almost worse than most. But there are other ways to drive him away. 

“What?” he blurts out. 

She leant in. Took care not to let her voice shake. “You heard me all right, Lassiter,” she whispers. “I want you to stop snooping into my life. I want you to get out of my damn house and stay _there_. What I do outside the PD is no concern of yours.” 

He shakes his head. She can almost see the cogs whirring behind his eyes, his mind trying to wrap itself around her words, make a sense out of them. _It’s working._ She feels as if there’s a knife in her hand, cold and discreet, pressed against him, angled just right to drive through his chest. 

“I don’t understand,” he says softly. She feels her throat tighten up, counts out to ten in her head. She gulps down all the things she’d really want to say. 

_I’m trying to keep you alive, you stubborn ass. I can’t let them know about you all – about Shawn, or Gus, or the Chief. About you. It’s not fixable. Not negotiable. I’m trying to save you, and save what remains of me in the process._

_You’re my best friend. You’re a big chunk of my sanity. Hate me, forgive me. But live. Live._

“You’re my partner, Lassiter. My _coworker_. I wanted us to be closer,” she tells him, and plunges the knife in. “but not _this_ close.” 

He stops breathing. His face shows nothing, a perfectly applied mask – but she sees him wilt, grow smaller, like a crumpled origami of a man. She pushes back, tearing her nails off the wall, freeing him – but most of all, she needs the distance not to break down. 

If she let herself sense it, if she lets herself get wrapped in the feeling, the _texture_ of his heartbreak, she will give in and drop on her knees to ask for forgiveness before she realizes it. 

“Now, if you don’t mind?” she says. She tilts her head towards the door, the night outside. “It’s two in the morning, and I have four hours to sleep. See you at the station.” 

He says nothing. He simply lifts his eyes to her face – slowly, briefly. He’s searching for something, there. He doesn’t find it. Then he’s pushing himself back on his feet, and slipping past her, and closing the door behind himself with the softest click. 

Standing in the middle of her dark hallway, pitch black closing around her, Juliet doesn’t move. She doesn’t look out the window. She just listens to his steps clicking down her porch stairs, thumping on the asphalt as he crosses the road, to the _whoosh-whoosh_ of his blood, straining to catch it over the rumble of his car. She listens to it as long as possible – till every trace of him fades in the distance. 

The photos are the first to go. She tears them down from the shelves and the walls, crashing the glass under her feet, ripping the frames into pieces with her bare hands. She grabs at the wallpaper, ripping chunks of plaster, leaves dents in the walls – claw marks on the floor. She screams, and growls, and roars as she tears through her lovely living room, like a vandal, like a storm, and yet it’s not enough, never enough. 

When everything lies in ruins, Juliet slumps down on the floor. She tucks her head between her knees – sinks fingers in her hair. 

Apparently, she can still cry herself to sleep, too.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlton does something extremely brave and extremely stupid.

It hurts, simply put. Thought the description seems lacking. 

It hurts awfully, deeply, spectacularly. It hurts bad enough to make hard to function. Carlton is a secret expert in that kind of hurts – in the way they jump on you, where they settle, how they work. And this is one of the bone-deep one, seeping all the way through your skin, your blood: lodging in the back of your skull like a migraine. He can feel it even now, pulsing faintly at the base of his neck, and along his spine too – so bad he feels as he’s pretty sure a pat on the back would make him jerk with pain. 

He pushes his tongue against the inside of his cheek, and can feel the hurt there too – tasting faintly like copper. Like blood. 

His father’s pickup growing hazy in the distance hurt that way. Victoria’s goodbye post-it taped to the fridge. His sister looking at him like he was a superhero who just lost the cape, and revealed himself as a sub-normal dummy. 

Driving home from Juliet’s place, Carlton has to concentrate just to keep breathing. His hands are trembling around the wheel. He reverts to the stupid station-issued mandatory psychology sessions’ breathing techniques not to work himself into hyperventilation, and he feels slightly sick when he spotted O’Hara’s backup lipstick shoved in the drink-holder. 

He even flirts with the idea of stopping by his favorite dingy bar and knocking down something toxic enough to fry up his brain. He flirts with many ideas, many projects, a good bunch of ghosts. 

In the end, he keeps breathing. He gets home in one piece. Sort of. 

He has forgotten his jacket and his coat in the car since his disaster of a stakeout, so, as laughable as it could sound in sunny tropical Santa Barbara, now he’s cold. He refuses to contemplate any other explanation for how bad his hands are shaking as he staggers into his kitchen, and fishes out his lonely, half-empty bottle of Irish whiskey, and fidgets with the cap enough to hear a satisfying pop and pour himself a glass. 

Carlton Lassiter has long since sworn himself he won’t drown himself in the embrace of buzz, because he isn’t his father. This night, though, it’s imperative to stay sane. 

Chugging down the first gulp, he sits at his table, carefully. And starts to think. He thinks through his first drink, and through his second one, and through the time he spends at his table as the shadows shift around him and dawn light silently seeps through the windows and baths him in soft gray. 

At six in the morning, he hasn’t slept half a minute. But he has a plan. 

*** 

He sees O’Hara walking in at seven-thirty sharp. He tears his eyes away from her as soon as she looks up, and keeps them stubbornly glued to the screen of his computer – but he knows her well enough to be able to see what she’s doing as if drawn on a blueprint in front of him. 

Now she’s saying hi to the secretaries; smiling at McNab – stopping by the coffee counter to fix her morning cup up. Now he hears her coming, pumps clinking on the floor like the needle of a click track; smells a waft of her perfume as she slips on the chair behind her desk, purse plopped down by her feet. 

By now, following their standard protocol, she would smile at him and wish him good morning – and he’d grunt back something a very linguistics-inclined person would recognize as a “you too”. 

Today, there’s nothing. 

Doesn’t matter. Carlton expected it. It still jars him, throws his world a bit off balance. But this time he had time to brace, at least. 

The morning crawls by, bland and uneventful. Spencer doesn’t show up: there is no obscure chatting, no “Lassie” and “Jules”, no intrusive stink of pineapple-scented soap. The Chief doesn’t need them. No urgent case hit their desk. 

She talks to him as little as humanly possible. Carlton doesn’t try to make her. Doesn’t even try to look at her too hard. He simply types away on his keyboard, filing in the reports he has been neglecting for the past three weeks. When she slipped a folder on his desk, she makes extra sure to take back her hand before there could even be a chance of contact. When she asks him if he wants more coffee, her eyes slide off his face, politely fastening on some nondescript spot of his shoulder holster. 

There are still things that don’t add up. Aborted glances, sliding his way and getting snuffed out midway: hands hovering awkwardly at her sides, lips parted, near words. Sudden jerks, as if she’s physically restraining herself from doing something – from saying something. 

But it could be all in his head. It _is_ probably all in his head. 

_Probably._

She only slips for half a minute – late, as the day draws to its end and they have already turned on their desk lamps. She’s waiting for him in the break room, beside the counter with the coffee machines. She knows he’ll come to scavenge up the last, dregs-choked coffee of the day. 

She’s still so pale – white and polished like glass, like a shell rolled on the shore – but she’s fidgeting with her hands, face soft with uncertainty. For a moment she looks so like herself, so _O’Hara_ Carlton feels his lungs close up. 

He forces himself not to slow down. Instead, he makes himself walk past her, acknowledgement a passing nod in her direction, and start to pour himself a cup. 

Silence thick. Hard to breathe through. 

O’Hara shifts her weight from one foot to the other, half-turns towards him. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpses her hands, the nail polish jagged where she’s methodically chipping it away. Juliet tortures her nails at least as much as he abuses his teeth. 

“Carlton.” 

“Yes?” 

“I just…” she trails off. Adjusts her hip against the counter. “Just wanted to make sure you’re… that you’re okay. I mean. That you understood what I meant yesterday – “ 

“Of course,” he cuts her off. He pours a pack of cream in the mug, spins it till it melts in the coffee, keeping his eyes carefully trailed on the little maelstrom of black and white. “Crystal clear. Duly noted.” He looks up. “I won’t ask you to tell me again, O’Hara. I’ll stay out of this. And I won’t go to the Chief – for now at least.” 

O’Hara’s eyes widen. She slumps against the counter, pressing a hand against her mouth, as if she can’t handle the relief, as if it’s all too much, and something tightens under his ribs. 

“You mean it?” 

“I do.” And he does. 

Her lips tremble. “Good, then. Good.” She says it again. To convince herself, him, he’s not sure. “Good.” 

He nods. “Yeah. All good.” Then, it suddenly gets too much. “Goodnight, O’Hara.” 

He means to pull back from the counter, start to go back to his desk and fix up a couple of the reports still lurking ominously on his desk – but O’Hara’s hand suddenly stops him. It closes on his shoulder, fingers digging in his shirt – in his skin. _She doesn’t have to try so hard,_ come the thought, treacherous. _She should know he’ll wait anyway. She should know she only has to ask._

Her eyes press into his temple till he meets them. “You know I’m doing this because it’s the best thing for both, right?” she asks, voice still so soft. “You know this, _right_?” 

There is something important, caught there in her words. The grasp on his shoulder turns painful – tight with urgency. Carlton feels a ripple of something running through him, a call, a warning. A hint of desperation. 

She needs it. He doesn’t know why, but she _needs_ him to say yes. 

“I know…” he hesitates. Try to put the words in the right order. “…I know you think it’s the best thing, O’Hara. It’s all right. I won’t bother you again.” 

“Oh,” she breathes out. Seconds tick past. Carlton counts two breaths in them, calibrating them carefully. Then she nods, and takes a step back. “Oh, perfect. I’m glad we straightened it out.” 

She doesn’t sound glad. She still has to takes her hand off his shoulder, and is prying it off finger by finger, letting it run down his arm, his elbow, as if she can’t convince herself to break the contact. For a moment, he thinks she wants him to do something. To say nothing of this is okay. To stop her. 

He clutches his mug so hard he feels the heat scald his fingertips. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m glad too. Goodnight, O’Hara.” 

She nods again. Her smile doesn’t get anywhere near her eyes. He watches her turn, and click her way out of the break room. After a while, he goes back to his desk, pretending to work as she gathers up jacket and phone, purse and badge, and glides through the precinct, saying her goodbyes, floating out into the night. 

When he feels reasonably sure she’s not coming back and she’s probably safely tucked in her ridiculous green beetle of a car, Carlton taps his phone to life to notify Spencer. As he punches in the text, he mentally went through the steps of the plan for the hundredth time. 

Surveillance shifts. Glock and backup gun strapped safely in the holster and against his ankle, loaded. Three backup magazines shoved in the glove compartment. Blankets. Energy bars. More coffee thermoses. 

He hits send. 

_She’s out. First shift yours. Don’t mess up. Anything happens, you call._

He hasn’t lied to O’Hara. Not quite. He _isn’t_ going to demand answer. He _isn’t_ going to rat her out to the Chief. 

But something is going to happen, something bad. And he’s going to stake out O’Hara’s door, bypassing sleep, food, sanity. 

And when she’ll go back to that factory, because he knows in his guts she will, he’ll be there. 

He’s not breaking his word. He’s working around it. 

_My God,_ Carlton thinks, grimly _. I’m spending way too much time with Spencer._

*** 

He immediately knows this is the night. 

Carlton is three days into the stakeout project – into this madness of a plan. Yesterday was the Psych dummies’ turn. Tonight it’s his. He parked a couple of houses down O’Hara’s, just around the corner. A tinfoil-wrapped sandwich waits sadly on his passenger seat. Guster actually looked quite worried when he handed it to him and recommended to try to eat it, but he already knows there’s no way he’ll be able to keep down anything. 

_You can’t live on coffee and granola bars, Lassie. No one can._

_Watch me, Gus,_ he thinks, distractedly. There is a strange quality to the air tonight, a heaviness to it, rushing up his spine like a rising tide. His stomach twists in painful knots. Deep down, Carlton’s a worrier; he can’t do a thing about it. He was born a worrier and will die a worrier. Besides, he’s spent enough years in the force to hone his surviving-on-coffee skills to an art. 

He’s a cop. He knows bad things happen – knows that most of the times preparing for the worst possible outcome is good because that’s exactly what will happen. It’s what makes being hopelessly pessimistic a gift. It’s what makes keeping himself this side of completely jaded so tricky. 

Yet, when it happens, it still hits him like a punch in the jaw. 

Seeing O’Hara creep out of the shadows of her porch, not bothering with turning on the light, not bothering with a coat or a jacket – the pale glow of her hair, of her hands – makes a bust of nausea crawl up Carlton’s throat. It makes cold sweat roll down his spine under the shirt. It makes it _too real_. 

He bits down his bottom lip, viciously. Slows down his breathing as much as possible. 

O’Hara walks across her yard. She stops for a moment by her mailbox, sniffing the air, the shadows angled just right to shade her eyes. Then she turns, chin high, and starts down the road. Carlton waits, reciting dates of Civil War battles in chronological order to make time pass, then starts the engine, and is behind her. 

Now he’s sitting in the Ford, the parking lot in front of the abandoned factory sprawling empty and silver around him. He’s clutching at the wheel – eyes frozen in front of him, burning holes through the glass of the window, through the hot summer dark, all the way to the dim white figure slipping through the gates of the factory. 

He has no idea what he should do. 

“Dammit,” he curses under his breath, with sentiment. He wants to punch something. “Dammit, dammit, _dammit_.” 

They’re not going to get here in time. When they first laid out the plan – or better, when three days earlier he dropped by at Spencer’s hut of an office at thirty past six in the morning and barked out his plan while the idiots moaned and yawned into their Lattes – Carlton himself has been adamant about the need to play it safe. If you see anything fishy in your shift, you call the others. You wait for them. You confront the situation _together._

You go in _together_. 

Most importantly, you do not walk in the damn factory alone. He marked the point tapping pointedly on their Formica coffee table, using the tone he usually reserves to cocky rookies in need of a roasting – and that even Tom and Jerry themselves seem to vaguely respond to. He said it multiple times, in an impressive menacing tones, promising increasingly horrible paybacks. 

And now, now he’s about to do the stupid thing himself. To _Spencer_ his way into a totally unknown, possibly dangerous situation. 

But Spencer and Guster are not going to get here in time. He had been so caught up in the shock of seeing his partner doing exactly what he feared she would do, he forgot to call them from Juliet’s house – and even if he did, it would still take them no less than ten minutes to get here. It’s too much. It’s too _late_. 

Rationally, he knows it’s not. The factory is right in front of him – whatever is going to happen, it will happen here. But waiting means leaving O’Hara there alone. Again. Leaving her come out covered in blood, maybe. Again. 

Let her sink deep enough to drown. 

_You're a complete moron, Carlton Lassiter_ , he says to himself, one more time. And scarcely a heartbeat later, _Okay, let's get down with this._

Carlton clenches his jaw. He reaches for the glove compartment, shoving his badge in the back of it. This is nowhere near a regular operation; he doesn't want to put the station and the Chief in trouble out of the sheer lack of judgment of their Head Detective. His Glock rests in the shoulder holster, the friction comforting every time his breathing sends it rubbing against his shirt; his backup gun strapped solidly to his calf, the handcuffs dangling from his belt. He feels blood pump in his veins, a motor kicking to life, anticipation an electric aftertaste on the tip of his tongue – turning the world sharper and brighter. 

He's as ready as he'll ever be. 

It will have to do. 

Carlton slips out of the car door, locking it behind him, and starts across the parking lot – running in a half-crouch, eyes trained on the jagged silhouette of the warehouse, fingers hovering one inch from his gun. He reaches the iron fences running around the courtyard, and decides he can't go through the gates: he doesn't know how closely the building is surveilled by whoever is waiting for Juliet, or if there is a someone at all, or how many people he should prepare for – so the circumstances demand some degree of stealth. 

He hits the fence, lips twisting in a grimace. The more he thinks about his plan, or better, his _lack_ of plan, the dumber it sounds. The more suicidal it sounds. 

But still. It's his partner there. Alone, and exhausted – and haunted enough to be mean. Usually, Carlton Lassiter would be the first to jump at the opportunity to prove himself people don’t want him in their life. But that night at her place, when O’Hara told him she wants him to back off and leave her alone, something in her face had been bugging him the whole time. Bugging him enough to swallow down the pain, not to let go, and not to trust her words. 

Maybe O'Hara is telling the truth and she simply doesn't want him around anymore. The thought hurts ridiculously bad, but he could live with it. 

But that night, and the afternoon in the break room when she asked him if he was really going to let the matter drop, she didn’t sound angry. She sounded scared. Desperate. 

And he won't let her alone in the dark again. 

Carlton heaves a sigh, curling his fingers around the cold black metal of the spiked fence. He lets his eyes skim down the facade of the ex-factory. No neon lights, no cars parked inconspicuously behind the corner, no guards. He adjusts his grip, pulls himself up, feet setting on the brick wall running under the fence. His hands slide up, Carlton himself up once again, and suddenly he's vaulting over the edge of the fence – clutching at the bars on the other side to avoid crashing down on the ground. 

His feet hit the courtyard concrete with a soft, discreet thud. The leap isn't anything special, but he still lands squatting down – sweeping his eyes around once again to check if anything stirred. 

Silence. Smell of salt and burning rubber rolling down in the wind, from the docks and the industrial district. Shards of bottles and cans scattering the black expanse of the courtyard, puddles from the recent rain reflecting the white globe of the moon. There are high, narrow windows slicing the factory wall, beaming pale in the dark – crusted over with dirt. 

Still, behind the glass panes, Carlton finally sees something. A flicker – a red-orange dot shuffling in and out of existence. A light. A _candlelight_. And against it – smudges of dark. Walking and moving in front of it. 

_People._

The people O'Hara’s here to meet. 

Carlton swallows, feeling his heartbeat pick up – because it's a good sign. He's found a clue: he's figuring it out. Suddenly, he has a purpose, a trail. After weeks of stumbling in the dark and the fog, it feels completely, absolutely fantastic. 

He gotta get in. Carlton rises to a half-crouch, shoulders tensed, and flies across the exposed space between the fence and the building as fast as possible – pressing his back against the brick wall as soon as he reaches it. His eyes flit to the window over his head, drawing up the memory of blueprints of buildings he’s helped busting, mulling over his next move. These warehouse-like places are bound to have a back door. A rather large one, too – for trucks and deliveries. And considering the side O'Hara has walked in from, he should be on the right one to find it. He peers into the dark on his left, then to his right, till his gaze gets snagged on a half-shape bulging from the wall less than fifty feet from him – a deeper kind of darkness. 

Carlton feels adrenaline ripple up his spine, like a shot of adrenaline injected directly in his brain. He has to call on every drop of willpower to keep from letting out a little yelp of triumph. He runs toward the smudge of dark, keeping close to the wall, and sees it coalesce into a door. 

A back door – a back gate, all graffitied metal and frosted glass. And cracked open. 

Slipping closer, Carlton starts pushing against one of the doors. The hinges are old, caked with rust, the paint leaving a smear of flecks on his fingers, but he feels it give in under his touch. The crack widens, grows large enough to let him in. 

Shadows rolls out of the gap. Thick, dusty, colder than what you’d expect in Santa Barbara’s scorching June. Carlton leans in, and there are sounds, woven into the darkness – echoes multiplied by walls and corridors, whispering all the way to him. Voices. 

There is something off about both the darkness and the voices, a quality that is too real, too touchable. It makes the hair on the back on his neck stand. Which is stupid. There’s no one else out here, and he hears no alarmed calls, no steps racing towards him. 

Still, Carlton feels the urge to look at his back – to make sure no one is staring at him. 

He shakes his head – clutching the handle of the door till the heated metal digging in his skin clears his mind. He doesn't ask himself why the darkness feels so strange – why it's so much thicker than the night outside, why it smells faintly of dust and copper. He doesn't ask himself why he feels suddenly watched, even if there's no one around him. Instead, he carefully slides in the crack, thanking genetics for the bony gangliness of his body, and waits for his eyes to adjust to the shadows. 

The air inside is chiller, and moist: it seems to flow down the walls, oozing from the cracks between the bricks. Carlton kicks at the ground, and watches a cloud of disturbed dust swirl around his legs. He's standing in some sort of storage room, long and narrow – bolted warehouse doors lining one side. A corridor stretches out on his left, a perfect rectangle of blackness. That’s where the voices are coming from. Now Carlton can hear them clearly – whispers and cries and laughs, distorted by distance. He recognizes a man talking, the faint hum of a crowd. And a female voice – young, strong, and pissed. 

Carlton's breath freezes in his lungs. He feels his bones turn malleable, liquid. 

_O'Hara._

O'Hara is there. And is having a _fight_. 

_Crap on a cracker._

Carlton doesn't even realize he’s moving. He simply finds himself stalking towards the gaping dark of the doorway, and pushing through it – starting to inch his way down the corridor. 

He feels the grim caking the concrete wall rubbing against the back of his jacket – against his fingertips, as he reaches out to prod his surroundings. Bottles and needles clink against his shoes every time they bang into them. Rats scutter in the dark. Somewhere, a gutter is leaking, the drops jingling softly through the air. 

The voices are growing louder now – closer. He keeps sliding along the wall, the floor stretching endlessly in front of him. 

Carlton is forcing himself to breathe through his nose, keeping the rhythm carefully even. The place stinks. It smells like rat shit and spilled alcohol and piss; something greasy he can't quite pin down, too, organic and overly-sweet, like rotten fruit. He feels it stick to his teeth, seep in his clothes. 

He reaches the next turn. Orange-amber light spills on his feet, suddenly edging him in gold. 

Carlton takes a step in the light. Looks up. 

And feels his wrists shake. 

Carlton leaps back, pinning himself against the wall – deep in the safety of its shadows. He swallows, half-choking on it. His heart is hammering against his ribs hard enough to be painful. 

The movement has been automatic – his body taking over and dragging them both to safety. His eyes, though, don’t leave the scene before him for one moment. 

The room the corridor leads to is vaulted and impressively large, with moonlight coming through the row of tall, patched-up windows he’s seen from the outside. A mop of vines runs down one corner, eating at the brick wall underneath. The place smells dusty - ringing eerie quiet of long abandoned buildings. 

Except it isn’t abandoned. 

A mismatched cluster of candles burn at the center of the floor – two figures facing each other on either side of it. Pressing close around them, listening intently to their conversation, people are watching. 

_Dozens_ of people. Men, women. Teens, children. A woman with a shawl around her shoulders, chuckling softly to herself and sucking on an unlit cigarette. A boy and a girl with garish purple hair and silver rings studding their bottom lips. An old, spectacled man, a janitor jumpsuit hanging from his bony shoulders. They’re all pale, and darkly-clothed, and outlined in the orange glow of the candlelight. And there are lots of subtly wrong things about them: teeth too long, eyes glinting red. 

One of the figures the crowd is staring at shifts. He’s a man. Carlton glimpses greasy dark hair, a thin ghoulish face. When he turns to the light, there are red flakes in his eyes too. He’s prattling on, animatedly, talking to the crowd. 

Talking to Carlton’s partner – who’s standing ramrod straight on the other side of the candles, and glaring and glaring at the fool hard enough to incinerate him. 

One of the figures is man. Carlton glimpses greasy dark hair, a thin ghoulish face. Red flakes glimmer in his gaze. He’s chuckling, talking to the crowd. 

Talking to his partner, who’s standing ramrod straight on the other side of the candles, and glaring at the fool hard enough to incinerate him. 

The guy prattles on, gesturing wildly as he speaks. He sounds confident – Southern drawl rolling down his words like they’re drenched in molasses. He sounds enamored with the sound of his voice. 

Carlton has time to realize he sounds disturbingly like Spencer, before his brain finally catches up on the words. 

"Here already, doll?" The man lifts his arms, spreading them, head tilted to the side. A preacher talking to his unruly flock, understanding and benevolent. "And I suppose in need of a recharge, judging from your face. You look… ravenous.” In the quivering light of the candles, Carlton watches the man bare his teeth. His _Fangs_. "Hunger been quite a bitch, uh?” 

“I need more,” O’Hara says simply. “I can’t take chances.” 

Carlton’s mind swims. He forces thoughts through the haze, through the leaden weight setting in his stomach. So he was right. O’Hara knows Greasy Hair. And they have a deal. 

Is he blackmailing her? Is that why she wanted him to stay out of this – to protect him? Is she asking the jerk for more time? 

Or maybe, Carlton thinks, tasting bile, maybe it’s nothing like that. Maybe it’s way worse. Drugs. It would explain her pallor, her jitteriness, why she’s looked like a freaking ghost for three weeks straight. And it makes the weight in his stomach grow unbearable, because he’s not sure he’ll be able to bring himself to do the right thing, if it means outing O’Hara – and destroying her career. 

_What the hell, O’Hara. What the hell._

The man is chuckling. “Insatiable,” he comments, in a tone that makes Carlton clench his teeth and want to punch something. “I like it in a chick.” 

Juliet’s face twists in a homicidal grimace that’s probably a good approximation on the one Carlton can feel tugging at his face muscles. Better, actually – because O’Hara’s skin is literally glowing with livid rage, sharp and hard like carved bone. 

Her hands curl into something awfully close to claws. In the candlelight, her eyes are as red as the man’s. 

“I’m getting the hang of it,” she hisses. There’s an edge of defensiveness in her voice, though, a touch of fear. “I’ll get better. It’s worth it.” 

The man snickers. He fishes a cig butt out of his jeans – _the fabric stiff from being unwashed from so long,_ the proper boy’s part of Carlton’s mind notices with disapproval – and he lights it up with an old-fashioned Zippo, tucking it between his lips. “Worth it. Yup. Suppose not eating your precious friends and sucking them dry like a strawberry milkshake’s pretty sweet.” He gives a dramatic sigh. “Though blood bags won’t ever taste half as good as the real thing. You gotta know it, doll.” 

Carlton’s breath itches. The man is clearly insane. Delirious. It’s not ideal, but they can take care of a lunatic. There’s a cult vibe about the cult, after all – if they subdue the leader, the others will probably follow. 

Still. 

Still, something feels wrong enough his body is blazing with adrenaline. Carlton’s eyes flick back to O’Hara, as he waits for her to laugh, or look puzzled, or tell the man to can it. Anything, anything telling him she’s as dumbfounded by his ramblings as he feels. 

_C’mon, O’Hara._ The man is blabbering – about blood, and eating people, and eating _friends_ – rattling away like a cheap horror movie’s villain. It’s nonsense. It must be. 

_C’mon, O’Hara. Tell him it doesn’t make sense. Tell him._

_Please._

Juliet is doing nothing of the above. Instead, she’s reeling – wobbling on her feet like he’s hit her with a punch in the gut. Carlton sees her curled hands shake, muscles fluttering in her jaw. 

“You try anything,” she snarls, her voice echoing quiet and deadly against the high vaulted ceiling, “you even think of touching _them_ , and I rip off your head. I swear it.” 

Carlton feels as if the world is tilting under his feet. The axes thrown off balance, just enough to make it uncomfortable. 

It’s not the first time he hears that tone from his partner. No one in his right mind should be fooled by Juliet O’Hara’s cheery, Miami-dwelling, sun-kissed-skin cheerleader look – because she may be all those things, but she’s also one of the toughest, fiercest people Carlton has ever met. He’s seen her slamming perps three times her size against their car hood without breaking a sweat. He’s seen her ranting and threatening. Hell, he’s been on the receiving end of several of her threats – some of which pretty graphic, too. 

It’s the first time, though, that a voice in the back of his skull is screaming she actually means what she’s saying. 

The dark-haired man doesn’t flinch – but he grows quieter. Warier. “No need to get nasty, dolly.” He takes a long drag, purposefully slow. Bluish smoke curls out of his nostrils – and Carlton thinks there’s something wrong with that too, with the way his chest falls and rises with the puff. “We’ll get you loaded up. There’s plenty for all. Fresh batch just came in today.” He sucks on the cig filter. “But you should really stop fighting it, sweet cheeks. You’re what you are. Stop pretending you’re still a goody-two-shoes little human. You’ll feel better. And _free_.” 

O’Hara flinches, hard. She lets out a hiss, like a wounded cat not giving up the fight. “What I do and don’t do with myself is nothing of your business.” 

“Till you take my blood and need my help, doll,” the man says, suddenly serious, “it is my business all right.” 

Holding his breath, Carlton slides one hand under his jacket – tracing the ridged hem of the holster, closing around his gun. The man’s words sound lazy, drawn out to the point of slurred, but there’s a prickling feeling buzzing at the base of Carlton’s spine, a thud of unease. 

His body is coiled tight, tingling with danger. And with every red alarm blaring at full force. 

He sorely regrets not having time to rush back and call backup. He sorely regrets being just him with his partner, in a room full of strangers – because as formidable as they both are, there is no way he can just swoop in, throw O’Hara over his shoulder and dash out unscathed. 

Which is exactly what his whole being is itching to do. So hard he chews on his lip to the point of pain just to fight the urge. 

Maybe he _can_ swoop in. They look like squatters, junkies maybe – the weirdest mishmash of junkies he’s ever seen, all right, but still nowhere near an elite fighting force. He can walk in, laying it thick with his Big Bad Policeman act, scare them away. O’Hara will back him up, and then they – 

In that moment, the man stops talking. And starts sniffing the air. 

_Actually_ sniffing the air – nostrils flaring head tilted to the side. There’s a perfect stillness about it that speaks of repressed energy, of pensive scanning – of hunt. 

Despite himself, Carlton feels his back pressing into the wall with a sharp, painful twist. He’s only seen that pose once – the cocked head, the thrilled stiffness – when he was a kid. He remembers neighbors’ dog squatting under their plum tree, sniffing out a squirrel hidden amidst the fruit-heavy branches, tail wiggling with anticipation. 

He remembers it didn’t end well for the squirrel. 

The man keeps sniffing – eyes glazed, distant. They suddenly look redder – glinting like copper coins. He slips the stumped cigarette out of his mouth, with quick, clipped motions – too quick, too precise – snuffing it out under his shoe, as if he doesn’t want any distraction. 

On the other side of the jumble of candles burning on the floor, O’Hara flinches – a rattled sound tearing out of her throat like it’s physically paining her. 

The man’s eyes look half-closed now, mouth open, sucking in avid gulps of air. His eyelashes flutter in delight. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, and there’s nothing lazy in it. The smile glow like a sickle of moon turned upside down – obscene like a slit throat. It has too many teeth in it. 

The man turns, slowly, eyes flickering along the walls under his eyelids. Fastening on the corridor doorway, the dark gnawing behind it. 

Fastening on the exact spot Carlton is pinning himself against the wall. 

Carlton forgets how to breathe. He feels ice rush through his veins – freezing him in place. The fingers around the Glock are tingling with frost. His heart is beating so hard he feels it pulse through the leather of the holster. 

A shock of white catches his attention, just out of the corner of his eye. Juliet is turning too. She searches for him, searches for his eyes, and Carlton suddenly realize they both can see him. 

_Impossible._ His mouth feels stuffed with concrete. _Impossible. They can’t see me through the dark. They can’t_ smell _me._

O’Hara’s face is a mask of frozen horror – so painful it’s twisting her features, burning it from within. Agony. It’s the only word coming to his mind to describe the expression in her eyes – agony, pulsing, vicious, bleeding. 

It makes him feel the urge to apologize. It reminds him of all the things she’s said in these weeks, the warnings, the distance – the bruising urgency in the way she clutched at his arm in the break room. _Promise me. Promise me._

It scares him more than anything he’s seen in his life. 

“Well, look what we’ve got here,” the man purrs. He’ standing in front of the light, now, eyes and mouth glittering in the shadows, and suddenly, Carlton has no idea how he could have thought he was a man at all. 

“Come here, little thing. I know you’re there. I can hear your pulse pounding as we talk. And oh, you smell so _fucking_ good.” 

There’s a ripple rushing across the crowd. They turn towards him, red eyes fixing on Carlton – faces splitting into grins, growing slack with rapture. They pin him there like thumbnails on a cardboard – like laser sights from a hundred rifles, scarlet and relentless, burning through his chest where the bullet is going to hit. 

It feels exactly like that. Worse than that. 

_Worse, worse, worse._

Carlton feels as if the very air is pushing him against the wall – crushing down his chest. Body locked, brittle. One step from shattering in a million pieces. 

Moving hurts. It hurts as he forces his fingers to adjust the grab on the gun, and to slip it out of the holster – as he forces his feet to take a step forward. 

Carlton walks on – right past the circle of candlelight, letting it blind him, drench him in red and gold. The Glock shines like a star when he extends his arm – the barrel carefully aimed at the man-shaped thing’s head. 

Every cell in his body is screaming to run, and not doing it hurts as much as moving. Still, his hand has never been firmer. 

_If he’s going down like this, he’ll damn well take the leering toothy prick with him._

The man-thing lets his gaze run down his body, lingering on the tip of his gun, the flutter of his chest, the laces of his shoes – and gives a laugh. Juliet growls, or sobs, or both. 

It’s like flipping a switch. The crowd laughs too, snarls and chuckles and hissing ricocheting against the walls, multiplying into infinity, and rolls forward in a single wave of white faces. 

As they close on him, Carlton realizes what's wrong with the crowd – what's his brain had been screaming in the back of his head since he glimpsed the crowd in the candlelight. 

None of them – not the teenagers, nor the chuckling woman, nor the man – are breathing. 

And neither is O'Hara. 


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: seriously whumpy chapter. Seriously gory chapter. There's blood and bones and violence and... well, being a vampire isn't exactly nice.
> 
> The partners fight. They win. Carlton offers assistance. Juliet is less than happy about it. These kids shouldn't be left unsupervised, I swear.

She’s known he’s there - immediately. From the exact moment he sneaked his stubborn, bony ass through the shabby doors of the delivery rooms. 

Of course he found the side entrance. Of course she should have bolted them, shut the whole damn place up to make it Carlton-proof. Even better, of course she should have wrapped him up in Bubblewrap and chuck him on a one-way flight to China or some equally impractical exotic location. 

_Dammit,_ it’s Juliet’s first thought, as she forces herself to keep her face blank and blandly annoyed, to listen to the prattling of the seedy prick currently holding her life in his hands. _Dammit._ And then, _Why is he here?_ , and _how did he know?,_ and _why is he here_ alone _?_

Most of the questions make her throat close up. Most of them make her chest clench so hard it nearly knocks her off her feet, because she knows their answers. 

_Of course he’s here. Of course, of course, of course._

Juliet lets her eyes fall closed for a fraction of heartbeat – giving herself time to put the pieces back together, to clear her mind enough to function. She bits on her lips, feeling fangs prickle, split the skin. 

She can hear his heartbeat growing closer – thumping on tip of her tongue. She can smell his scent, too – his warmth. If she closes her eyes, she’ll see him there – projected against the dark canvas of her eyelids, glowing red, pure coalesced light. He smells good. He smells like prey, and yet, he’s Carlton. 

He’s always been heat – barely contained under a crust of ice, like the volcanos rumbling in the guts of Earth, deep under Iceland rocks. 

He may smell like prey, but he still feels ready to burn down the whole world. 

Juliet’s head snapped to the side. He’s here. At the dark-haired man’s back, in the dark doorway gaping there – pressed against the wall of the corridor. She can picture him down to the details: stance ready, tightly coiled, hand hovering over the holster. Probably frowning at the man’s drawl and filthy jeans. 

_No. No, no, no._

Juliet’s past panicked. She’s fucking _terrified_. There’s a whole damn hall filled with things like her, strong like her, ready and hungry and desperate. And if she can smell him, so can they. 

Her dealer is still toying with her. He has just asked her a question, grinning. She’s barely able to work her way through the words. When her tongue rubs against her teeth, it tastes ashes. 

Thinking rationally is growing hard. Thinking in _words_ is growing hard. 

She failed. She failed at keeping him away – _safe_. 

She has to get him out of here. She has to keep him away from them. 

_And she’ll do it._ Juliet realizes it with something that isn’t quite her mind, that isn’t quite human. But she’s not human anymore. Her humanity is burning, like strips of paper going up in flames, last bits churning away in the wind. She burns, with cold and heat, with red, with purpose. _She’ll do it._

She sees the moment her dealer feels his smell. 

It rips something out of her throat, a stillborn growl. She betrays herself, because it’s already too late, because there’s nothing to fake it for, twisting her head towards the doorway, and finally, finally she meets her best friend’s blue eyes – wide and alert and edging on lost. 

She stares at him, silently cursing him, and the world, and the cruel thing that gorged on throat that night, and more than anyone else, she curses herself. 

The man is turning, now. Slow, pleased. She watches a new tension fill his stance, straighten his spine. She hears Carlton’s heart pick up in response to whatever he’s seeing on the man’s face. 

Juliet is gaping. Thoughts disconnected – colors too bright, overexposed. She cannot understand the man’s words anymore – only the feeling of his tone, the ghost of fangs flashing in the dark, of a mouth suddenly housing too many teeth. 

There’s a stir, in the rows of people around her. She can almost feel the film of normalcy fall from their shoulders, leaving bones and teeth, claws and craving. 

A beat of silence: suspended action. Then that big idiot of her partner, pulse booming in his throat, teeth shaking so hard she can hear them, steps forward, and levels his freaking gun at the monsters’ boss’s head. 

Juliet doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry with frustration. 

_Typical._

“SBPD,” Carlton barks, voice as steady and steel-made as his grip on the Glock, “hands up, asshole.” 

The dealer laughs. It’s a bad laugh, and midway through it it’s turning into a growl. There are new rows of teeth gleaming in his mouth. The man crouches, back arching, muscles coiled and tight. 

“No,” Juliet whispers. Roars. “ _No!_ ” 

The man leaps. He’s a blur of white hands and shadows, fast enough to make the threadbare sweater flap around his body like a sail, and suddenly he’s standing in front of Carlton’s gun. Clawing at his neck. 

Juliet is jumping forward, too. She arches midair, closing the distance. It’s too late. 

“I’ll eat you, little thing,” the monster snarls. “I’ll rip off – “ 

Carlton shoots. 

The shot is point blank, the ripple of heat and impact rippling through the ground and up the walls in widening rings around him. Still, it’s perfectly executed – clean. Carlton barely flinches at the recoil, hands solidly clasped around the trigger, one eye closed for extra precision. It blows through the right temple of the dark-haired man, blossoming in sick flowers of blood and brain matter, gray and red. Red splatters across Carlton’s check, so dark against his pale skin it looks black. He doesn’t move. 

His breath is itching, pupils nearly lost in the blue – but when they slide to Juliet as she lands beside him, she feels the force of it all the way to her guts. 

For the fraction of a second, the blink of an eye – for several thousand years – they simply look at each other. She reaches out, curl fingers around his shoulder – the urge to touch him, to _feel_ him nearly overwhelming. 

She feels him stiffen. Tremble under each of her fingers. 

Then, two things happen. 

Juliet is searching for the right words, for any word, when she notices there’s more blood on Carlton’s cheek than it should. Brighter blood, redder. Warmer. _His_ blood. 

At the same time, the man he’s just shot in the head starts howling. Shrieking, clutching at the marred, steaming ruin of the right side of his face – and alive. 

The stir in the crowd at Juliet’s back grows restless, raging. She flicks her eyes over her shoulders, and see white hands and white faces roll forward, melted together by the dark, a bubbling ocean of fangs and eyes and want. 

The monster’s clawed at Carlton’s face before he could pull the trigger, and now he’s bleeding. The scent seems to grow and swell, filling every crack of the concrete floor, every space between bones and tendons and teeth. It’s milk and honey, salvation and sex – the only color still bright in their world. 

The monsters won’t stop, now. They won’t _think_ , now. Juliet knows it, suddenly, with absolute, jarring certainty. 

She knows, because she’s feeling the pull too. 

“A cop,” the thing that has been the dark-haired man croaks out. He shouldn’t be able to talk. There’s blood running down his neck, bubbling and thick – his jaw hanging askew, bone glimpsing through the tendrils of flesh. “ ‘figures, dolly. You a fucking flatfoot. Your little human _thing_ ’s a fucking flatfoot.” 

He teeters forward – the motion too smooth, too weightless – bones clicking like dice rattling together. Blood squished under his feet. “I’m gonna kill you both. I’m gonna tear you into pieces. And make you watch as I rip out his throat.” 

Juliet slides between the bleeding thing and Carlton. She feels her lips pull back from her teeth, the barrel of his gun scraping against her nape. She doesn’t fight it, this time. She lets the fangs push into their sockets, her bones shift under her skin – a snarl rolling out of her mouth. 

She feels charged up. She feels impossibly strong – impenetrable. She feels she’s burning so much she’s one step from combusting, and knows she looks terrifying, and knows she’s never felt so free. 

“O’Hara,” her partner says, very quietly. Carlton is a dot of crimson pulsing in the gray, a white-hot bullet searing its way through her scalp. Soft, scented in caffeine. The only thing to stay steady in the maelstrom of her head. 

“Shut up, Carlton,” she answers, simply, and turns towards the rows of red eyes. 

“You won’t touch him.” 

The man barks a laugh. There’s a twitch where his right eye has been, and he’s grinning, through raw flesh and ripped skin and shards of bone. 

“You’re powerful, fledgling.” He wheezes. The pale faces at his back move closer. Juliet crouches lower. “But not nearly _enough_. Do you plan to take all of us down?” 

He’s right. She can feel it now – a tug, a current, rushing down her veins, lodged somewhere where her heart used to beat. Strength. Power – the feeling of a well-trained arm stretching, endlessly multiplied. But she knows it’s not enough to take them down. Not enough to get out of this. 

Fighting is hopeless. Foolishly, stubbornly fearless. Nearly as much as walking in a nest of monsters with nothing but a gun and a badge. 

Juliet doesn’t move. Curls her fingers into claws, ready to charge, ready to pounce. 

“Maybe I can’t,” she hisses, “but I would still like to _try_.” 

She growls. The man laughs again. 

A click echoes on her right. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpses the silver gleam of the Glock. 

“You take the ones on the left,” Carlton says, matter-of-factly. “I take the ones on the right.” 

It very nearly makes her smile. 

The couple of teenagers and the cackling lady leap forward, shrieking, closing on Carlton. A shot rings out, the boy’s blue-shaded hair exploding into a flower of redness. Juliet’s hand is already closing around the lady’s throat – a roar rumbling up her throat as she sinks her teeth in her skin. 

Juliet feels thick blood flood her mouth, cold and sticky, sending a throb down her spine. It feels like fear, and rage – and dully, distantly, like exultation. For the first time since she woke up in her basement, screaming and changing, Juliet gives in to it. She welcomes the maddening rush, the cold fire blossoming along her bones, all the power and all the dark, and as she inhales deeply and taste the hunger of the other monsters craving her partner’s blood, she lets the feeling take hold of her till she loses herself in it. 

She feels her body move, cold and seamless. The world has blinked into sharper details – lined in hard silver and burning red. The monsters attack frantically, messily, crawling over each other – claws outstretched, fangs bared, eyes sparkling like cigarette dots burning in the dark. She fends them off. She grasps at arms, tears limbs off sockets, rips tendons. A girl with blond hair comes howling for her – Juliet grabs her by the neck, shakes her, feel the bones snap, and growls in triumph. 

Shots echo against the ceiling, quickfire and loud. She whips her head around, looking for Carlton. when can’t find him, Juliet feels her mind teeter, stumble on the edge of the chasm. She rages harder. She bites tighter. She feels blood trickle down her arms, cake her clothes and her legs, and yet it’s not enough. 

They won’t have him. She will stop them, every one of them – and destroy for even trying. 

Seconds blur into each other. The only thing keeping time are Carlton’s shots, bouncing neatly off the walls. She lets the rhythm guide her, like war drums. A thing of teeth and bones jumps over her, crouching and reaching for her throat – and she blocks it with her arms, groaning. She never sees the one on her right. 

Pain flares up her side, so hot and unexpected – tearing a moan out of her chest. She lashes out without turning, feeling her elbow sink into an eye socket, hard enough to crush the skull underneath. Her attacker cries out – the first one still gnawing uselessly at her arm. She’s stronger, but they’re so many, so many. 

As she fights, she sees things. Red eyes turning glazed, dark like chips of glass. Bones giving out under her hold. A body trashing for its life as she sucks it out. Shards of humanity, too – plastic charms tied to backpacks’ zips, tennis shoes scribbled with feltpenned flowers. Woman’s lips, tinted in Purple Dream, the same shade she’s bought for her twenty-eighth birthday. She sees it all, feel it sear into her brain, and knows she’ll never forget any of it. 

More claws dig into her flesh, the impact echoing through her bones – drawing blood. She slashes out with her arm, and finally glimpses Carlton taking aim, a blur of pink and white on her right. It nearly makes her sob with relief. 

When she sees him, he’s just out of the corner of her eye. 

He’s standing among his people, pale and bony, red matter still drying on the right side of his face – the man she has no name for, her dealer, Frank’s friend. He’s perfectly still, but buzzing with repressed energy – cloaked in it like a perfume. 

They stare at each other, a gunshot cracking between them. Then his eyes flicker to her right, to her partner – and sharpen. There’s hunger, in that look, and something exquisitely human too. 

Revenge. Revenge on her. 

She sees him squat down, eyes trained on his target. They blaze with red smoke. 

She whips her head back, fumbling for a warning, a shout, something, but she can’t remember how to do it. 

_No._

The man growls, leaps forward – fingers outstretched towards Carlton’s throat. 

Juliet is on him before realizing it. She feels her hands clasp on the man’s bony arms, holding him tight enough she hears bones crack, and pushes her mouth against his neck. _No_. She bites down, skin cracking under the pressure like frozen-over snow, and she gnaws at his flesh, harder, deeper, till her fangs skim bone and he starts trashing under her grip. _No._ She thinks of his voice curling around the words “little thing”, about his arms reaching for her partner. 

_No._

She growls, loud and rumbling, with pure rage, and when she clenches her jaws and rip off whatever comes off with her teeth, he stops screaming. 

The man sags in her arms – throat a madness of red, eyes chips of colorless glass. She hauls his body across the room, without a single glance. 

It’s only then she hears the silence. There’s no thunderstorm of bullets, no shrieking, no blur of movement. Juliet lets her eyes skim over the candles rolling on the floor, the bodies littering it, neat bullet holes through their pale skull, spines gleaming wet white – and over the ones still standing. So many, still so many. 

_I can’t take them all down,_ Juliet realizes. Wobbling on her feet, feeling exhaustion rush over her like tide. We _can’t._

Except. 

Except they’re not attacking. They’re just staring – at the man’s corpse she’s left on the ground, and at her. Gaping. Waiting. 

Juliet stops thinking. She realizes at some point of this insanity she’s weaved her hand around Carlton’s wrist – a clumsy compromise between holding his hand and holding him back. She clutches at it – enough to feel the warmth of his skin seep into her palm, the rhythm of his pulse against her fingertips. He shifts his hand in her grip, and for a moment she’s afraid he’ll pull away and leave her alone. But he merely twists it – meeting her fingers, lacing them with his own. He squeezes, and she squeezes back, holding back the bare minimum not to crush his hand into a mess of bones, as she turns back to the rows of waiting monsters in front of her and feels blood running down her side fast enough to soak up her stockings. 

“You’ll leave us alone,” she says – voice loud enough for all of them to hear. “You’ll leave me and _my_ people alone. Otherwise, there will be consequences. Otherwise, I will kill you. And now, we’re leaving.” 

Words itch in her throat. She feels distant, light, so far, far away. 

“We’re _leaving_.” 

No one says anything. No one stops them. No one moves as Juliet starts across the factory hall, weaving her away amidst the fallen ones and the standing ones, tugging on Carlton’s hand – half-dragging him in her haste to get them out. The pale men and pale women of the old factory simply watch, unblinking red eyes following every move, every breath, every stumbling step, synchronized like drones. Juliet feels their stares dig into her skin, but she doesn’t let herself dwell on it. There’s a message there, an accusation, tailored for her and only her, but when she trudges through the last handful of feet and pushes past the doors, she nearly forgets about it. She simply squeezes Carlton’s fingers a second time, drinking in sweet gulps of night air, clean and bright as peppermint, and resists the urge to just leap past the courtyard and run and run and run. 

Instead, she staggers towards the outer gates with its the iron fence, not looking back, holding tight on the large, bony hand wrapped in hers. Holding on it as if she means to never let it go. 

“O’Hara.” 

Juliet stumbles. There’s blood, coming out of her, slower than it should, but still – blood. Pooling around her pumps, a dark-watered puddle. 

She doesn’t slow down. 

“ _O’Hara_.” 

This time, it’s Carlton tugging on her wrist – halting mid-step, forcing her to either go on and drag him like a sack of potatoes, or stop in her turn. She chooses the latter – barely. 

She turns, too fast, too slow, feeling dizzy, feeling monstrous and caked in monsters’ blood, and stares at her partner – his eyes so pale in the starlight. He takes a step closer, raises one hand to her cheek. Slowly, as if not to startle her. Tucking a curl behind her ear. 

“O’Hara,” he whispers. “We got out. _You_ got out. And if you keep squeezing it like this, you’re going to crush my hand.” 

She doesn’t know what does it. The tone, his words, the touch – everything. She just knows it feels like flipping a switch, and that suddenly her legs are folding under her, crumbling like wet paper, and that it’s only Carlton’s arms coming around her that prevented her from crashing on the ground, and that then she’s tucking her face against his chest, grabbing at his shirt, as she cries for him, for the blood and wet things caking their skin, and for herself. 

*** 

They barely make it to the car. 

Carlton has slipped her arms around his neck and hauled her up, bridal-style, before she had a chance to say anything about it. Once pressed against his chest, she just hasn’t had the energy to protest. Hasn’t had the energy to do much of anything. 

It’s different than when she was human. The wound is a tearing in her left side, claws marks slicing through muscle and flesh and fabric, the kind of thing that would have make a human howl with pain, or pass out, or bleed out before they can do a damn thing about it. Instead, now it feels more like an absence – absence of sensibility, every feeling swallowed by a buzzing numbness, absence of response when she tries to move her left arm. And there’s something in motion, between the jagged edges of her wound: tissues working, prickling, knitting themselves back together. She could feel her bones sliding back into their place, inch by inch: muscles shifting under her skin. And that hurts, and there is still blood rushing down her arm, down her leg, dripping on the ground and all over Carlton’s hands. 

He talks to her for the whole time, the tone hushed and urgent. She can’t make out the words. She’s freezing – brutal shivers rippling through her body, eating away at her awareness. 

_Am I going into hypovolemic shock?_ She wonders, idly, letting her head loll against her partner’s shoulder. Another thought skims her mind. 

_Am I dying for_ real _?_

Sounds punctures her cloud of numbness. The chirp of a car key, the clack of a door pulled open. 

“Okay O’Hara.” Carlton’s voice – closer. His body moving around her, his warm breath against the shell of her ear. “Hold on. It’s okay. I’m gonna sit you down on the seat, okay? Okay. Hold on. Just _hold on_ , O’Hara.” 

She hears a sound – faint and wailing. It takes her a moment to realize it’s coming her. Carlton merely shifts his hold on her – under the knees, around her shoulders, like the freaking crinoline-wearing damsel on a cheap romance cover – and crouches down. Juliet’s eyes are still closed, eyelids as heavy as if nailed there, but she catches a rustle of clothes, a waft of the coffee-gunpowder-cologne scent of Carlton’s Ford – the seat leather slipping slowly under her legs. Her arms are still looped around his neck, and as he helps her settle in, her lips brush the skin above his collar. It leaves a prickling sensation thrumming in her mouth – a sharpening of senses. She feels her teeth cut her tongue. 

She pulls back, sharply. 

At the sudden motion, her back screams in agony. The pain rushes up her spine like a blast of white-hot light, cutting through her, and Juliet arches off the seat with a strangled cry before crumpling down on her side. She barely has the time to lean over the side of the car before she starts retching. A puddle of blood splatters on the concrete under her. 

Carlton’s hand skims along her back, pulls back her hair just in time – but it’s shaking. She feels her mouth tingling with iron, and she coughs up more blood – heaving it up in the pool spreading by Carlton’s feet, seeping through the cooling concrete. She coughs up till she feels she’s done, spitting out the taste. When she looks up, his face is nothing more than a smudge of color, and a lot paler than before. 

“Oh, God…” She hears him whisper, voice choked. Carlton Lassiter doesn’t usually invoke deities’ names – neither in anger nor in plea. “Oh God… O’Hara.” A pause. “ _Juliet_.” 

She’d like to tell him not to worry. She’d like to reach out – to comfort him. But she can’t touch him. She’s already too close as it is. 

He lifts his eyes into hers. “I’m taking you to the hospital.” It doesn’t sound like a question. 

She shakes her head – the movement feeling broken and weak even to her. “No,” she croaks out. Holds out one hand, preventing the objection working up in his scrunched eyebrows and tight lips. “Can… can’t. I can’t go there anymore.” 

“What the heck do you mean – “ 

She thrusts out her arm – palm up, bending her wrist. Slowly, never letting go of her gaze, Carlton closes his fingers around it, thumb sliding to her pulse point. He crouches there, long legs uncomfortably folded, under him, half-covered in blood, looking disheveled and exhausted, and waits. And waits. And waits. 

She knows what he’s not feeling. She knows the _absence_. And as she watches his eyes grow large with horror, and then anger, and something agonizingly close to compassion, she wonders if she’s had any right to put such a burden on her best friend’s shoulders. 

There’s no heartbeat to listen to. And now he figured it out too. 

Silence. Seconds tickle past. Then, Carlton takes a long, shuddering breath. 

“Tell me what you need.” 

“What?” Juliet blinks – slumps against the leather of the seat. She wonders if the blood loss is making her delirious. “Carlton, did you get it? I’m one of them. I’m one of those – “ 

“I _get_ what you are perfectly, O’Hara,” Carlton cuts her off, and she suddenly can’t hold his gaze anymore – because she believes him. “I’m simply moving to the next issue. So I’m asking you, what do you need? Meds, gauzes – what?” 

Juliet swallows. Carlton is still staring, still searching her face – the pressure of his gaze both comforting and crushing. 

Now that they’re alone, now that there’s no immediate danger, no immediate surge of adrenaline to ride up, it’s there again. Th hunger. The lure. The fluttering in his throat, the indigo trail of an artery glimpsing through the skin. The ghost of his warmth on her body, burning like a mark everywhere he held her. 

His blood – still oozing from his cut, fragrant, soaking up the whole night sky. 

Juliet curls her free hand around the seat edge, nails digging in the leather till they rip through it and brush stuffing. She racks her mind, struggling for a good answer, a good lie, a good _something._

“I don’t know,” she gasps out. “There’s nothing. I need nothing. I dunno.” 

She averts her eyes again – and feel them glue to his exposed arm, the pulsing veins running down it. 

She flinches, licking her lips – catching herself almost immediately. 

_Almost._

A strange look falls on Carlton’s face. His eyes grow brighter – cold with thinking. He follows her gaze, stares at their joined arms. 

She can almost see the moment the pieces click into place beyond his eyes. 

“Oh,” he says, quiet and curious. She watches helplessly as he rises to his feet, gently freeing her wrist. 

He shrugs off his jacket. Frosty dread coils deep in Juliet’s guts, pinning her down against the seat. 

“Carlton, what the Hell are you doing?” 

“You drink blood, probably” he says, companionably, as if he’s asking her where she wants to go for lunch, or what damn ice cream flavor she likes the most. “You’re losing blood. So, I’m offering blood.” 

“ _No_.” 

“ _Yes_.” Before she can go on with their argument, he slams the door in her face – making sure not to chop off any of her fingers in the process. With growing panic clenching around her throat like a vine, she watches him march around the car, toss his jacket in the back, and slips in the driver’s seat. The door clicks closed behind him – ominously final. 

Juliet feels the cold glass of the window pressing against her back, the car handle digging painfully in her side. She can’t pin down the exact moment she moved against the door. She’s a mess, still oozing blood, the numbness creeping up and up – making her clumsy. Making her _slow_. If she was in top notch shape, he’d never pull this little trick. 

_And he knows it. The bastard._

She feels so scared of him, so scared _for_ him, she nearly hates him. 

He taps at his tie, untying it in a couple of quick, practiced motions – taking it off. 

When he starts unbuttoning his collar, Juliet lets out a cry – a pained thing between a growl and a whimper. 

Her fingers flutter up the car door, skidding against the window, trying for a way out of this, finding nothing. Because she doesn’t want to find anything. Because she doesn’t want to run. Not really. 

_Mercy, not_ really _._

Carlton rolls his eyes at her attempts – casting her a sidelong, politely annoyed glance. “There’s no need to make a scene, O’Hara,” he grumbles, slipping the second button of his shirt out of its hole. “Geez, looks like it’s you the one about to get snacked on.” 

“No need to _make a scene_?” Juliet parrots him, gaping. For a moment, the utter, cocky ridiculousness of the statement makes her so angry she nearly forgets how terrified she is. Which could have been part of his plan. Or, more probably, Carlton is simply being himself, hard enough to make her want to bite his ass just to get even. 

_No no no. Wrong choice of words. Don’t go there Juliet. Don’t you dare to go there._

Carlton lets out a huff – but there’s a quaver in his breathing. He pops one more button, tugs down at his collar – exposing a strip of pale flesh, a hint of collarbone. Juliet’s eyes flicker up his throat, metal filings pulled by a magnet. In the dim glow of the light tucked under the rearview mirror, the artery there shines through like a brushstroke of pale blue, but she wouldn’t need the light to see it. 

To her, it blazes so bright and red it hurts. 

She hears a screeching sound, and it’s only now she realizes she’s still clawing at the car door – peeling off the paint with her nails. She plasters against it, spine quivering with the effort, and clenches her teeth as tight as she can – biting down on her tongue. 

“You don’t understand,” she says, voice scraping her throat like gravel. “I can’t do this, Carlton.” 

His eyebrows scrunch together. “You mean you _literally_ can’t suck my blood?” 

Juliet’s fist shoots out without her permission. Crashing against the window and punching a neat spiderwebbed hole in it. “No, _Carlton_. I mean I wouldn’t be able to stop. I mean I can’t do it without killing you in the process.” 

He swallows, the gulp rippling in his neck – but he doesn’t flinch. He just shakes his head, and clenches his jaw, and looks at her again like she’s not making any sense and just being silly. He barely acknowledges the mess of shattered glass now littering his ruined passenger seat. “Of course you’d stop, O’Hara,” he says, in the soothing tone he reserves for her and maybe his sister, and the trust ringing in his words nearly undoes her. 

She shakes her head. If her heart was still beating, meeting his eyes right now would probably stop it. “No. Believe me. I wouldn’t.” 

She sees his jaw work – the muscles there feathering with the force he’s clenching them with. He leans in, starting to close the distance. Juliet pins herself against the door with a whimper. “But I trust _you_ ,” he breathes out, voice loud and clear and sincere, “and if you think I’m going to let you bleed out in my damn car without doing anything, you have another thing coming.” He swings his hand to the side, pointing at the huge bulking darkness of the factory, the trail of blood smudges that dripped off them on the concrete as they stumbled out of it. “You saved my ass from whatever happened there – and you’re my _partner_. I’ll take the risk. And I trust you.” 

“But I _don’t trust me_.” Juliet’s voice gets out like a gunshot – a death rattle. She has had no intention to say it. She has had no intention to sound so broken. A sob tears out of her lips, making her whole body rattle. 

He reaches out, face pale and soft in the half-light – one hand brushing her knee. Juliet cries out like a woman in agony. She jumps back, the car jolting with the movement, trying to make herself as small as possible. Her side is growing scorching-cold, throbbing. She’s shaking so hard she hears her teeth chatter in their sockets. 

She’s confident nothing Carlton could do, no matter how formidable he is, would be able to hurt her. Still, if he touches her now, she’ll shatter in a million pieces. 

Carlton’s voice is a whisper. His fingers still suspended in the air, reaching for her. “Juliet…” 

“I, I have tried for so long,” she stutters. Lets out a secondo sob, and a third. “I have…fought this for so long. Since the first day. Since I-I walked in the station, and – and saw you.” Juliet hangs her head, overwhelmed, and she sucks in thready gasps of air, trying not to drown. “I’ve _wanted_ it… for so long. I think about it – all the time.” She tears her gaze off the seat, off the spiderweb of her bad blood spreading across the ridges and seams of the leather, and fastens it on his face. “Every time we’re close. Every time I… hear your heartbeat. I’ve imagined doing it so _much_ , and I… I know – it cannot end well. I, I can’t…” 

She’s sobbing now, in earnest. She sees it in his eyes, in the way the blood rushes out of his face. It’s tearing both of them apart, but she has to say it – has to make him understand. 

“If I do it, I won’t stop, Carlton. I won’t stop soon enough.” 

This time, he is reeling. He draws back his hand, a little too fast, a little too sharply to be casual – pressing it protectively against his chest. 

He looks pale, and wide-eyed, and lost. Utterly lost. 

With a rush of clarity that nearly blinds her, Juliet realizes that this is probably the first time her partner is really acknowledging what she is. The first time he understands it in his guts, in the speeding track of his pulse. She watches him suck in a breath, his shoulders squaring and tensing, every instinct in his body screaming at him to open the door and run and run till she can’t track him down anymore. 

Worst of all, she watches him fight it – every step of the way. 

The war goes on for a couple of breathes – a couple of her sobs. Then Carlton straightens, and takes another breath, slow and steadying. The lines of his face stay pale, but they harden – slip into a familiar kind of severity. 

He’s made up his mind. He’s not going back. 

Not taking his eyes off hers, his right hand skims up his shirt – undoing the strap of his holster. The Glock rustles out of its leather nest, metal gleaming faintly in the half-light. 

She hears the click of the magazine slipping in. His knuckles are bone-white around the trigger. 

“Then we’ll do it like this,” he says, low and deliberate, articulating each word with great care. It feels a bit it’s an emergency protocol, the only thing keeping him from starting to scream and never stop, but it’s working. She follows the silver barrel of his gun as he trails it on her – aimed right at the center of her chest. “If you don’t stop, if you can’t stop, it means you will not be able to live in the human society. It means you’re a danger to the population. So I’ll be –“ He swallows, Adam’s Apple bobbing under his undone collar, “– I’ll be morally and legally obliged to take you down.” He’s still looking at her. 

“If you don’t stop, O’Hara, I’ll shoot.” 

Juliet stops shaking. Swallows her last sob. “You promise?” 

He nods, looking like a man torn apart from inside out. Voice cracking. “You know I will.” 

She does. Staring at him, pupils wide with shock, fingers unwavering around the gun pointed at her heart, she knows with absolute certainty he will shoot her. It will break his heart, maybe nearly kill him, and he won’t ever be able to even start to forgive himself, but he will do it. For her sake. For his city’s sake. Because it’s the right thing to do. 

That’s what makes her crumble. She feels it bubble up in her chest, dulling the fear – flooding her with relief. She lets her eyelids flutter closed. She’ll cave in. She’s caving in. She’s giving up already, and it nearly feel like bliss, and she hates herself a bit more for that. 

“I know you will,” she says. She forces her eyes to snap back open, to burn into his skull. She feels so tired, hollowed out, but she needs to say this, because she knows her best friend too well not to. 

“It hurts too much,” she growls, “you start feeling faint, you shoot. No heroic bullshit, Carlton. No waiting until the last possible second.” She claws at the dashboard, bracing herself. “Is it clear?” 

The sonabitch has the nerve to scowl. He nods, shuffles closer. 

“C’mon, O’Hara,” he simply says, exposing his neck. The tone is hushed, raw. A pleading snagged somewhere. “Let’s get over with this.” 

He licks his lips. 

“I trust you.” 

Juliet would like nothing more than crying her eyes out. But she can’t. They’re in this together – and like it or not, if they’re getting out of it, they’re doing together. So she heaves a sigh, clutching at the dashboard – and drops the shields that have kept her sane since she climbed into his car. 

It hits her like a wave. A sea-storm wave, bubbling, pushing her under. The world turns pure black. Her brain freezes. Every nerve under her skin flares to life, bright and burning like stars, her senses buzzing like electric clouds. She suddenly feels his scent roll off in water rings off his body, setting her nostrils on fire – smelling like milk and honey and warmth and sweetness. She swallows it, sucking it down her throat in huge, greedy gulps, and she moans with a pleasure so thick and hungry she nearly doesn’t recognize her voice. 

His heartbeat throbs on the tip of her tongue, too quick – the _whoosh-whoosh_ of trapped wings in his ribcage. She yearns for it. She yearns to free it. 

He’s still arching his neck, skin gleaming white in the rearview mirror light. Juliet’s teeth sharpen, tingle. He takes a breath. 

Before he can finish it, she’s on him. 

Her body moves with brutal efficiency. The interior of the car blurs into smudges of black and gray, and suddenly she’s closed the distance between them. She digs one hand in his arm, closes the other in his hair – tugging it back with a sharp yank. She hears his gasp – the thud of his back crashing against his car door. She crawls over him, pinning him against it. 

Under her, he starts trashing weakly – fighting. It makes it all worse. It makes it all even _fucking better_. Juliet feels his blood thrum against her, his muscles twitch, the sweetness turning richer, decadent with fear, and feels another moan crawl out of her throat. She sniffs at his neck, at his fluttering pulse point. She holds him tighter harder, pressing him down, and opens her mouth, and pierces through his skin. 

It gives in under her fangs like melted butter – warm and smooth. He lets out a cry, surprised, pained. She feels it ripple down his throat, and drinks it in, and in the same heartbeat, she starts to suck. 

It’s nothing like the bags. Carlton’s blood, floods her mouth, alive and hot, rushing over her tongue – and Juliet instantly forgets how she has ever managed to hold back for so long. It tastes bold, sweet and intoxicating like hard liquor – just like it should. She wants to roll in it. She craves it, with a hunger that tears at her insides, make her bones bellow and throb with it, and she’s suddenly biting down harder – gulping down mouthful of warmth, of light, of _Carlton_ , relentlessly, pitilessly. There’s a tearing, the sickening stripping sound of open skin, and she realizes she’s not biting, but _gnawing_ on his skin – ravaging his neck. Her eyes flicker open, and she glimpses something – a madness of red and pink where her mouth latches on his throat, flesh raw and exposed, dripping down her chin – soaking up his shirt. It makes her ravenous. It makes her exhilarated. 

She growls against his skin, and sucks down on the gash, licking at its edges, digging deeper. She can feel his pulse stuttering, rattling his body with its rush – throbbing in her mouth all the way from his heart. She can almost see it: fist-sized, glowing crimson at the center of his chest. She wants it – devour it, devour it all, like exquisite chocolate, milk and honey. 

She crashes him against her body, and feels her nails cut through his shirt, his skin. She feels him shudder, too hard to be a good sign, but it doesn’t matter. 

Nothing matters, nothing but the pulsing in her mouth, filling her, making her stronger with each gulp. 

“O’Hara.” The voice is gasping – eons away from anything of importance. There’s a scraping at her arm, feather-like – a tugging at the back of her jacket. She realizes with a surge of exhilaration that he’s trying to push her away. 

“S-stop.” A rush of air – grazing her temple. Already weaker. “O’Hara. Stop.” 

She’s missing something. There’s another voice, deep in Juliet’s guts, amidst the swirl of fresh blood and the thrill of the hunt, screaming at her to listen. Something she should remember. Something vital she’s forgetting. But the world is receding back, losing consistence, losing shape, so cold and dull compared to this. 

Carlton’s chest is heaving, brushing against hers at its uneven rhythm. Something presses against her stomach, colder and harder than flesh, and she hears a click, but Juliet barely registers it. “O’Hara…” 

That name has no importance. His tone – the hurt, the fear – has no importance. She simply holds him tighter, like a lover, like a mother – snagging his wandering hand by the wrist and slamming it against the window at his back, crushing down till she hears his bones grind together. 

She’s killing him. She knows it. She can feel it in the slowing thump of the blood in her mouth, in the thready pattern of his heart – stubbornly going on without enough blood to do it. So stubborn. Fearless. And still burning bright enough to blind her – to sear through her skin and turn her bones into ashes. 

She sucks harder. She wonders what will happen if she keeps holding on till his wrist snaps under her fingers – how it will feel. She wonders what he’s feeling, what this looks like from his point of view: utterly trapped, soft skin bruising under her touch, his blonde, five-two feet, sweet partner caging him there, Gasping and shaking at her mercy. 

She feels him swallow. Force out a breath – a sob. “ _O’Hara_ …” 

She growls softly into his skin – shushing him. She’s killing him, yes, but not out of hate – oh, no. She still loves him. She loves him as much as before – and that’s why she’s doing it. She thinks of how beautiful it would be to feel him even closer, drink him all in, till every piece of him would melt into her skin, into her bones – always bright and safe, where no monster would touch him, and no man and no madman and no bullet and no knife either. There’s such beauty in that thought, such comfort. Such love. 

No one will touch him. She’ll touch him first. She’ll have him – 

There’s another click, the echo rippling through her stomach – and something in it makes her stop. 

Juliet opens her eyes, blinks. Takes in the night streaming through the windshield, the wet red of the blood on the seats. 

And Carlton’s shape, deadly pale and looking painfully fragile, cocking the barrel of the Glock between her fourth and fifth rib. Aimed right at her heart. 

“O’Hara,” he gasps out – lips blue and shaking so hard the words nearly bleed together. “Stop. _Now_.” 

She hesitates – but doesn’t stop. Blood keeps pooling in her mouth, filling it like an overflowing cup, and she gulps it down – rolling in her dream of blood and love. Carlton’s body is slowing down, she knows it. His skin turning chilly, slick with cold sweat. Each beat sounding like a battle, thick and ponderous. 

He lets out a strangled sound, pained, scared – full of rage. “ _Stop_.” 

Juliet blinks again. He’ll shot, if he still has enough energy to pull the trigger. It’s not a problem. She can probably survive it. She can probably carry on with it. 

Yet. _Yet._

Beneath her, her best friend lets out something close to a sob. “ _Juliet!_ ” 

It sears through her brain like a shot of adrenaline. It hurts, badly, so much she wonders if he’s already shot her through the chest. 

But no. He’s waiting. Waiting for her to take the chance. To save herself. 

_Pulling his usual heroic bullshit._

Juliet gasps – tearing her fangs off his skin with a growl. She snatches her hands back – releasing him, curling them into fists, tight enough to dig into her skin, to keep them still. 

She grits her teeth, calling on every scrap of strength in her body, every scrap of sanity, every memory of every smile and every word and every small precious thing they have ever shared, and tears herself off him. With a jolt that makes her bang against the dashboard, glass and plastic cracking in the process, she physically hurls herself across the seats, and claws at the door. 

She won’t resist much longer. She won’t have a second chance. Juliet lets her hands wander down the car door, nails skidding against it, and hooks them around the handle, pushing hard enough to pull it off its socket – till she feels it give in under her fingers, and the door slides open, and she can throw herself out, crawling away as fast as she can. 

She pushes herself further, farther, till the scent isn’t as overwhelming as inside the car – till she can nearly think a thought that isn’t ripping throats and beating hearts. She jumps on her feet. Heels clicking against the ground as she staggers like a drunk. 

Juliet heaves a sob – another. Her stomach cramps up, bile rising on her tongue. She lets the shivers run down her spine, burning her and chilling her to the bone in turn. 

At her back, the car is quiet – oozing silence. She turns, slowly and carefully, because too sharp a movement would probably make her crumple on herself and disappear like an imploded star. 

The interior of the Ford is a gaping hole of dark – blood glistening in the shadows. At the center of it, Carlton lays slumped against the car door where she’s left him: gun cradled on his stomach, face as pure white as his smeared shirt. They both glow faintly in the half-light. 

His eyes are open. And trained on her. 

“New seat covers… are on you,” he wheezes out, and then his head lolls back against the window. 


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter guys. I just... love these two so much. So damn much.

On their way back, he let her drive. They’ve pulled in a parking lot they have killed time during their meal breaks, close enough to the ocean for the smell of salt and iodine to drift through the windows cracked open. As soon as they stopped, Juliet shoved in his hands the Styrofoam cup of coffee she insisted to buy at the little 24-hour Walmart on the other side the lot, dumping a whole pack of instant cocoa in it too. 

After taking a careful sip, Carlton made a face. 

_It tastes_ vile _, O’Hara._

_You need caffeine and cocoa to get your blood sugar back up – and a hot beverage to raise your core temperature. So you’re drinking it._

_Aw, c’mon. There’s no need to make such a fuss. I was passed out for two minutes, tops._

_She cast him a glare. He had the decency to squirm on his seat. Scarcely a second later, though, he scrunched his nose, eyes dark with pondering._

_Now that I think about it – they let you walk in the shop covered in blood? That’s unacceptable. Shop managers are legally obligated to report any –_

_Carlton,_ please _. Just drink the damn thing._

There must have been something in her voice, then, because after that Carlton stopped bitching and has started talking healthy gulps out of his restorative cocktail. Or maybe he actually feels as like crap as he looks. She’s bought hydrogen peroxide and a pack of gauze pads at the store, too, and they have patched up the gash in his neck as well as they could – but the whole thing still looks gruesome. 

The holes left by her fangs are nothing like the neat little holes movies suggest. It’s broken skin – skin ripped off to bare raw flesh, and bite marks crowning the gash – red, swollen lines where her teeth scraped against his throat. One inch deeper, and there would have been tendons ripped. Bone exposed. Carlton prattled on for a while about the fact that it should have been mortal in any case, that her saliva has to contain some clotting agent to close up the wound if the prey is needed alive, because there is no other way he’s not bleeding out to death right now. 

She kindly and firmly invited him to shut it. 

Now the gash is cleaned and white pads wrapped tightly around his neck, but it’s barely better. He’s still drenched in blood, the shirt color barely visible under it – and so pale his eye sockets stand out against his face like bruises. His lips look chapped, bluish. His hands shake slightly as he curls them around the cup – nursing its warmth close despite his reservations. From time to time, she finds herself checking stealthily on his heartbeat – just to make sure it doesn’t slow down too much. 

Her eyes snatch back on his neck, and Juliet has to clasp her hands around the wheel to keep herself from feeling sick. Spots of blood are already seeping through the bandages. 

Carlton, though, seems to have set his sights on different priorities. She has braced for it since she saw him at the factory. 

“So.” He leans back against his seat, peering pensively at the store lights blinking through the windshield. “I’d like to clear some things up.” 

Juliet nods. “Yes. Go on.” 

“Good.” He clears his throat. “First things first – You are a vampire.” 

Strangely, the word hits her like a slap. She knows it’s true, of course: she’s known the name for the thing she has changed into since that first night. But still, she realizes she’s never really thought it – coalesced it into her mind in a single, clear form. She’s never said it. And she feels glad he has said it, now, because somehow hearing it for the first time without Carlton would be a lot worse. 

“Yes,” she answers, the pause slightly too long. “Yes, I suppose I am.” 

He nods – as if ticking it off on some invisible test sheet in his head. “It happened that night. When you called in sick and didn’t pick up my calls.” This one isn’t a question. 

“Yes,” she says. She hears him shift his weight, his sharp intake of breath, and holds up a hand. “Yes, it was horrible. Nightmarish. I’ll tell you about it, one day. I need to, to get it out – to process it properly. But unless it’s strictly, matter-of-life-or-death important, I don’t want to do it tonight.” 

She feels his eyes fasten on her – pressing against the skin in her temple. Carlton’s gaze still has pressure, a consistence of its own. That hasn’t changed. 

He nods again, the motion gentler. “Okay. I can handle that.” Out of the corner of her eye, Juliet watches him look down at his coffee. A single line deepening between his dark eyebrows. “What you told me – told me before, about holding back, fighting it…” He hesitates, voice trailing off for a second. Unconsciously, he raises one hand to the bandages wrapped around his neck, tracing the hem of it with one finger. “…Is that way you avoided me all this time? Why you avoided Spencer, Gus – all of us?” 

She knows she’s stalling the inevitable, but she can’t help arching an eyebrow at him. “ _Us_?” she parrots. “Carlton Lassiter, since when do you consider yourself and the Psych an ‘us’? You guys must’ve done a lot of bonding while I was distracted being a creature of the night.” 

He waves his hand as if chasing away a particularly annoying mosquito. “Of course not. I mean, maybe. Well, in this case, yes, _us_.” 

The tone is flippant, but his shoulders are still tense – back ramrod straight against the seat. He’s waiting for her answer. He won’t let it go. And he deserves the truth. 

“Yes.” The words get out fast and soft, leaving her in a single rush of breath. “I… I realized I could feel them, all the time. The hearts beating. The blood slushing in people’ veins. Their – their _life_. When I got at the station that first day I thought the simple sounds of hundreds of lives crammed together would drive me mad, but when I saw you…” She shakes her head, nails scraping at the hard rubber of the steering wheel. “… Apparently, with people you’re close with it’s ten thousand worse. It’s positively horrible with Shawn and Gus too, even with McNab and the Chief, but… we spend so much time together, Carlton. And I love it,” she hurries to add, seeing his eyes dim on the duplicate Carlton reflected in the windshield. “I _need_ it. I think these past weeks your presence has made me slightly mad and kept me sane at the same time. But every time you brushed my arm, or I had to look at something on your computer from over your shoulder, or you simply sat on my desk to talk… I could just think about how it would feel to sink my teeth in your neck. About your blood – the taste of it. I…” Juliet falters, because this feels unexpectedly vulnerable, more intimate than anything she can think of. “… I would recognize your heartbeat among thousands, Carlton. I can feel it on my tongue, even now – know it like the palm of my hand. And sometimes, I just had to get away from you, because otherwise I wasn’t sure I would be able to control myself enough not to hurt you.” She gives a laugh, short and bitter. “Turned out I was right about that.” 

Carlton’s hand has frozen around his cup midway through her speech, the coffee sloshing slightly with his trembling – but now he rounds on her, tightly-coiled and fierce. “No, you weren’t. You _stopped_ , O’Hara. I don’t care what you say about it, but when I asked you, you stopped. That’s good enough for me.” 

Juliet wants to shake her head, list all the ways this isn’t _good enough_ at all – instead, she munches on her bottom lip. They’re not even close to done, but that’s probably a battle for another night. If her grumpy, normally hyper-judgmental, currently half-drained and exhausted best friend wants to believe she’s still a good person because she didn’t quite rip his throat out, then she can let him. At least for tonight. Even if it makes her chest clutch with a dull, throbbing kind of ache. 

He tilts his head, lips clasped. She sees in his eyes the questions aren’t over yet. 

“Those people. Back at the factory.” His throat bobs, and he scratches at the gauze again. “Who the Hell were they?” 

Juliet sighs. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I suppose I’ve been kinda sloppy in handling this vampire-ness. I think they’re the vampire population of Santa Barbara, but I’m not even sure about that. I just know the dark-haired guy had lots of blood in stock, a whole refrigerator of bags and jars. I don’t even know his name.” 

Carlton’s eyebrows crawl up to his hairline. “ _Jars_? Vampires keep blood in _jars_?” 

She shrugs, feeling a half-smile tugging at her lips. “Apparently.” 

He rolls his eyes, holding up his free hand as if he’s finally given up on the world’s inscrutable idiocy. The bruise around his wrist where she grabbed him is turning purple. “I refuse to feel flabbergasted by lack of vampiric hygiene after the kind of night I’ve been having. So, I’m not an expert – but tonight it looked like after you took down their leader the others stop fighting. They looked… lost. Waiting.” He frowns, voice very matter-of-factly. “O’Hara, are you by any chance the new Vampire Lady of Santa Barbara, or something like that?” 

Juliet blinks, feeling like someone has just dropped a ten-tons anvil right over her head – scattering the scraps of brain matter she’s been left with. She groans, and finally gives in to the urge to lean down and rest her forehead against the wheel. 

“No,” she says. Then: “Yes. Maybe.” She sighs, not looking up. 

Carlton sounds thoughtful. “ _Mh_. Oh, well – I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later.” 

He starts tapping at the edge of the cup, a tight, precise staccato echoing the rhythm of his thoughts. There’s a ripple across his face – thoughtfulness turning heavier, harder. Eyes growing completely unreadable. 

“O’Hara,” he says, very slowly, and Juliet straightens back as if someone is pulling at invisible strings tied to her bones. “We’ve been circling around it long enough. We need to talk about the core question – the fundamental one. I can’t hold it back anymore.” He takes a breath, a bracing thing – exhales it with caution. His voice still sounds a bit softer than it would usually be, raspy where it scrapes his bruised throat, and because of it, his words feel too raw. Painfully vulnerable. 

“You told me you can hear my heartbeat, right?” 

Juliet’s hands grasp at the wheel. The rubber creaks and squeaks in protest. Keeping from tearing it off out of sheeranxiety makes her shiver with effort. “Yes.” 

“Even now, right?” 

Talking takes effort, too. “Yes.” 

“And you can monitor my breathing, too?” 

“Yes.” 

_That’s it_ . Juliet feels the thought come up, unbidden, rising to the surface like a bubble. Here comes the horror, the righteous anger. _Here comes the moment he feels the indents in his neck and fucking realize in that thick head of his what I nearly did to him._

She waits, frozen. He can still undo her with a word – shatter the last fragments of her humanity. That hasn’t changed, either. 

“O’Hara.” Carlton leans in, slipping his cup in the drink holder ring, keeping his face unfalteringly blank. “You do realize how _awesome_ this is?” 

Juliet blinks. She has no idea how it’s possible, with a supernatural hearing and all that, but she genuinely thinks she’s heard wrong. She’s _sure_ she’s heard wrong. Or maybe the blood loss is making him delirious. 

“I beg your pardon?” 

Carlton’s face splits in a huge grin. “It’s the most awesome thing I’ve _ever_ heard.” The grin turns manic. “You’re practically a living lie detector, O’Hara. You get it – a foolproof lie detector paired with the mind of a police officer! You could read perps’ vitals as you’re grilling them – cut down on time _and_ expenses! It’s the future of police work!” 

Juliet pulls herself back against the seat. She gapes at him, eyebrows scrunched, and feels a chuckle pop out of her mouth at the same time, as if her face can’t quite decide how to react. “Are you _serious_?” 

“Of course I’m serious.” He wiggles his finger at her, eyes sparkling. “And you should be too, O’Hara. You’ve been bestowed with a noble mission – a sacred duty. The human lie detector – sensing criminals’ lies and kicking their asses at the same time.” It’s then the chuckle wins – and Juliet starts laughing in earnest. Carlton goes on, apparently unfazed, all wrapped up in his righteous police enthusiasm. “You are morally obliged to put your skills in the service of Santa Barbara’s good citizens. You’d be an invaluable asset for the force.” 

“You’re a dork,” Juliet wheezes, still laughing so hard she can barely get the words out. “You’re a complete dork, Carlton Lassiter. I don’t know how people keep falling for your serious persona.” 

“I’m not being a _dork_!” Carlton protests. He sighs dramatically, shaking his head. “Damn, fate gives you police superpowers, and you don’t even realize their potential. What a waste. If only I were chosen to be the very first Vampire Detective in the history of California.” 

“The _first_? Are you planning to create an army of blood-sucking cops, Carlton?” 

“Of course I am. I admit I still have to figure out a couple of technical issues – like feeding them without, you know, decimating Santa Barbara’s human population – but I’m sure we can come up with something. Or we can give them Spencer to feast upon. That’d be doubly satisfying.” 

“ _Carlton!_ ” 

“You’re right. Spencer’s blood probably tastes like sugary pineapple-flavored conditioner – nothing like mine. Feeding our vampire cops that crap would be inhumane.” 

Juliet snorts loudly, and is laughing again. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him grabbing back his cup – and hiding his grin behind its hem. She laughs, and laughs, and remembers how long it has been since she has laughed for real, and how damn good it feels. 

And it helps. As she calms down and Carlton stops offering gruesome ways to draw blood from Shawn Spencer and filtering it, she knows they’re still sitting in a car at three in the morning on a working day, surrounded by blood crusting over, and that her mouth still pulses with the feeling of her partner’s life ebbing away from the gory gash on his neck – but still, it helps. They’re still here. He’s still making horrible jokes. She still gets them. 

They’re not too far from daybreak, and against all odds, they’ll both see it. 

When she’s stopped snorting, Juliet racks one hand through her hair. Fingers snagging on dust, crumbled concrete, dried blood. 

“What happens now, Carlton?” she asks, pulling her knees up against her chest. She sounds very small and very scared. She couldn’t care less. 

He shakes his head. “Right now? We go to sleep. And chug down some aspirin. And go to work praying to every God of Law Enforcement listening.” 

“You are _so_ not going to work in these conditions,” Juliet says, automatically. She really doesn’t have in her to fight right now. Idly, she indulges on her previous plan of knocking him out and handcuffing him to his bed. 

Carlton bristles. “I am,” he snaps, but his voice lacks conviction. 

“You’re not. We go home, and call in sick, and go to sleep,” Juliet says, “Then I swing by your place with pancakes. Deal?” 

A pause. “Deal.” Carlton gives a second sigh, slumping against the seat. “As for the less immediate future… I have no idea, partner.” 

_Partner_ . Hearing him call her that feels good. Ridiculously so. She cuts him a glance, sees him scratch absently at the back of his head, mussed gray-speckled hair standing up in spiky chunks around his pale face, and feels the urge to fix them for him. 

They may be screwed, but they’re screwed as partners. Together. 

“Oh, _crap on a cracker!_ ” Carlton slams one palm against his forehead, makes the leftover coffee-cocoa concoction slosh dangerously in the cup, and pours a good gulp of it on his charcoal slacks. He doesn’t acknowledge it, probably because the beverage isn’t blister-worthy hot anymore, and because the pants are already ruined beyond hope. “Tom and Jerry. The Psych dummies. I was supposed to check with them at midnight. They’re probably running around like beheaded chickens in that flea-ridden office of theirs right now.” 

“Aww - they worry about you. That’s actually kind of cute.” Juliet grins, cheek pressed against her stockinged knees. “To quote Shawn, ‘their hearts really heart yours.’” 

Carlton looks chagrined. “They’re probably taking bets on which gruesome and wildly improbably death I’ve finally walked into.” 

“Or maybe a bit of both,” Juliet offers. 

“Mh.” Carlton rubs at his nape again. “I suppose you don’t want me telling the Chief about this.” 

Juliet straightens – so fast and hard the car shakes under them, squeaking. “ _No_.” 

“Dammit, O’Hara – take care! I think my car has been mistreated enough for one night.” He finds her eyes. “But I presume you want to share with our resident nuisances. _Vampires_. Damn. Spencer will practically burst with excitement. Hit on you even harder, if that’s physically possible.” 

Juliet frowns. Fiddles with a leather strap torn from the seat. “I… I don’t want to tell Shawn.” She senses his surprise, then his objection, and stops him before he can say anything. “I – I know I’ll probably have to, at some point. But right now… I’m not sure I can do it. Staying around him is pretty tricky too. Not as tricky as with you, but…” 

Carlton’s mouth opens in a small, slow ‘O’. Which changes into a little grin half a second later. “So you _really_ wanted to suck my blood more than his. _Ha_!” 

Juliet’s frown deepens. She gapes a couple of time, speechless. 

Gosh, he looks satisfied. Giddy with bragging. 

“Carlton, are you seriously glad I wanted to assault you more than Shawn?” 

“No! I mean, yes. A bit.” 

Juliet rolls her eyes – hard. This time, she’s not even sure he’s pulling her leg. 

When he nods, though, his voice sounds serious again. “Then that’s settled. I won’t say anything till you do. To anyone.” 

Juliet’s stomach tightens – the anvil on her chest heavy enough to make her hands shake. For one, white-hot moment, she feels unbearably aware of her lack of pulse, of the cold silence settled forever in her bones. Of her being here, being almost herself, and yet – yet not alive. 

“How can I go on like everything’s okay?” Again, talking feels like an effort – like tearing each word out of her throat, with scorching tongs. “I – how can I still be a cop, Carlton? I’ve tried, and _tried_ – and what I got from it? I nearly went insane, and I nearly got you killed. _Multiple times_.” She grits her teeth. “I can’t let it happen again. Ever again.” 

She rips her gaze off the safety of the wheel, and fastens it on Carlton’s face. 

And that’s when he reaches out, and grazes her arm, and squeezes it. Hard, because he knows she can take it. 

“Bull,” he says, simply. “I call bull. I was only half-joking about the human lie detector thing. From what I’ve seen, there’s nothing in your new conditions that should prevent you from being the damn good officer you are. These past weeks you’ve been jumpy, and elusive – but not in the field. You’ve still done your work, and done it excellently; we still closed a couple of hairy cases, and we were barely talking. I refuse to lose one of the Department’s best asset to a stupid twist of fate.” His fingers curl tighter on her wrist, voice raw. “I refuse to lose my _partner_ to a stupid twist of fate.” 

Juliet feels her chest clench with gratitude – but she closes her eyes. Shakes her head. 

She should remember Carlton Lassiter is a hardass, and not any good at relenting. So he doesn’t move one inch. 

“I mean what I say,” he tells her, slowly and firmly. “We’ll figure it out. I trust us with it.” He shuffles closer – his warmth clouding the air around them. “Check it, O’Hara. Check if I’m telling the truth.” 

She knows what he means. Juliet cracks her eyes open, hesitantly, finding his expecting face a couple of inch from hers, and reaches out with that new sense that isn’t quite taste and isn’t quite hearing. Finding his heartbeat. Which pulses strong, regular – utterly calm. 

A truth-teller’s heart. 

He sees her realization written all over her face. Carlton pulls back, adjusting himself back on his seat and giving a final squeeze to her wrist. Juliet can barely talk around the lump stuck in her throat. 

“You mean it,” she whispers. “You really believe I can do it.” 

“Of course I do.” 

She ruffles her hair – ripping strands of blond locks from her half-made bun. He’s doing it again, the bastard. Slipping under her skin. Persuading her. “Well, what – what about the little problem of me drinking blood? I’m not sure I can go back to bags – not after I… I tasted the real thing. What will we do next time I feel like snacking on a neck? Yours, per say?” 

“Well.” Carlton clears his throat, a faint blush spreading pink on his cheeks, and Juliet feels already one step from panicking. She doesn’t trust him when he looks this special brand of awkward. “We’ll need to find a more long-term solution, of course. Maybe with time you’ll get better at it. And meanwhile, I can be your… blood doll or something.” 

Juliet’s eyebrows arch so fast she would have pulled a muscle, were she still human. “A _blood doll?_ ” she parrots. 

“Yes – you know, a person that provides you blood willingly – at regular intervals.” 

Juliet’s eyebrows are still stuck in her hairline. “Carlton, you told me on multiple occasions you don’t like reading anything except history and military strategy books. Do you actually dig _vampire romances_?” 

The blush reaches the tips of his ears. “You always tell me I need to branch out,” he protests, fumbling. 

“Vampire romances. Sweet Justice. You should feel obliged to buy me breakfast every single damn morning just to keep me from telling Shawn.” She sobers up – biting down on her bottom lip. “Would you… would you really do it? After what, what happened.” 

“Yes,” he cuts her off. “I mean, it’s definitively not on my top-ten of favorite hobbies, but neither is doing paperwork, or talking to people, and yet here I am. We’ll fix a schedule. Maybe choose less obvious spots – maybe the arm, or the wrist.” He picks at the gauze, scowling. There is no way he’s gonna be able to hide it under his collar, and a pang of guilt ripples through her ribcage. “I don’t want people to think I’m some sort of needle-loving _junkie_.” 

“Oh no. You’re just going to be your decadent vampire partner’s _blood doll_.” 

“That’s enough, O’Hara.” 

Juliet smiles. She reaches for the key, turning on the ignition. The engine comes to life, throbbing under their feet. He’s trying to pull the Steel Man act, but Carlton’s head is lolling against the window on his side – eyelids struggling to stay open. 

He’s probably staying awake out of sheer stubbornness – she’s seen him doing that. It’s high time she takes him home. 

“Okay. You win, we’ll do it. But I won’t do anything till I figure out how not to lose my damn mind as soon as my fangs snap out. Believe it or not, I’m not completely comfortable with the idea of sucking blood out of you every time I feel like having lunch.” She taps on the steering wheel. “I… you know, you have no idea how hard it has been.” She sees one of Carlton’s eye snap back open. His attention shifting on her. “Keeping my distance. Avoiding you, not smiling, not talking with you. Telling you the – the things I told you, three nights ago.” She turns. “I didn’t mean any of it, Carlton. Not one word. I just, just said them because I wanted to keep you out of this mess. Keep you safe.” 

She half-expects a scowl – a flipping remark on what an epic fail her tack has been, considering the current developments. Instead, she gets a smile, soft and real, that hits her right at the center of her chest. 

“I know, O’Hara. I knew right away.” 

“And, it’s been – horrible. You have no idea how glad I am now you know, Carlton. How much I missed _this_.” 

She gestures between the two of them, at the blood-caked, growingly-sticky Ford, at the coffee cooling in the cup and the night stretching around them. 

“You’re wrong, O’Hara,” he says, quietly, and his breath itches on her name. “I _do_ know.” 

Juliet nods, not trusting herself to say more without bursting into tears. She pushes the pedal, and pulls out of the lot, cruising through Santa Barbara’s streets in the pre-dawn calm. Carlton finally nods off against the car door. She’s turned off the interior light, but she can still glimpse her face in the rearview mirror. White skin, pale lips, eyes swirling with red. 

It’s appalling, and disturbing, but it’s still her face. 

She’s fought hard to be here. She faced a monster, and held him, and cut through his skin, and stopped her own heart, to be here. To keep fighting, like the man snoring by her side would want her to. 

_Keep fighting, Juliet._

She has no intention to stop now. 


End file.
